Apr 18, 2025
On April 17th, President Trump signed a Proclamation rolling back protections for the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument (PIHMNM) to industrial fishing, and signed an Executive Order calling for a review of all marine national monuments to assess opening them to industrial fishing.
Both actions are direct attacks on our nation’s marine protected areas – allowing for exposure to industrial fishing practices that put previously-protected marine life and habitats at risk.
Executive Director of the America the Beautiful for All Coalition Shantha Ready Alonso said of the rollback:
"The America the Beautiful for All Coalition is made up of people who care about communities and places. The Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument is an important place loved by people we love. The natural, cultural, and spiritual heritage of the once protected areas is newly vulnerable to commercial fishing damage. On the surface this is an ocean issue — but it's the first attack on our interconnected system of national public lands AND waters. If they can do this to the Pacific, they can do it everywhere and to anyone. We need to hold the line here."
America the Beautiful for All Ocean Workgroup Co-Chair Angelo Villagomez said this rollback
"sets a dangerous precedent that our public lands and waters are for sale to the highest bidder" and "there is room for us to have the world’s best managed fisheries and networks of marine protection, safeguarding the most threatened, iconic and special places in our ocean." Villagomez offers 5 things you can do if you’re pissed off about the latest Trump EO.
The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition made the following statement:
"attempts to open the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument (formerly the Pacific Remote Islands) to industrial fishing, threatening to reverse decades of progress to safeguard one of the planet's last wild, healthy ocean ecosystems.
The move intends to scale back protections from 50 to 200 nautical miles, opening up 408,000 square miles of the monument to harmful industrial fishing extraction. The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition is not standing down to allow industrial fishers to exploit and raid protected ocean areas. Furthermore, the President does not have the authority to undo monument regulations. Now is the time to stand together and fight to protect the ocean that we all rely on.
The Pacific Islands Heritage is one of America’s underwater treasures, with deep sea coral reefs and resilient shallow reefs; threatened, endangered and critically endangered whales, sharks, rays, turtles, and seabirds; seamounts that serve as ecological hotspots for biodiversity; deep-sea species not found anywhere else on Earth; and the waterways of ancient and modern Indigenous voyagers."
