Marine monument group joins conservation conference

Representing Friends of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, Ignacio V. “Ike” Cabrera, chairman, and Laurie Peterka, secretary, will be among 1,200 professionals and citizen conservationists who will hear from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, retired U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who headed the federal response to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and historian/author Douglas Brinkley at the National Wildlife Refuge System Conserving the Future conference in Madison, WI.

The conference will be held July 11-14, when a new vision will be ratified to guide the Refuge System for the next decade.

Speakers will also include oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle; award-winning nature photographer Dewitt Jones who traveled the globe for National Geographic; MacArthur-winning environmental activist Majora Carter of the Bronx, New York; and Juan Martinez with the nonprofit Children & Nature Network and named by National Geographic as one of its Emerging Explorers.

FOMTM is among more than 100 nonprofit Refuge System Friends organizations at the conference. FOMTM was formed in 2008 to express the voice of the local community and consists of a cross-section of indigenous and resident people of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands who are dedicated to the conservation, preservation and protection of flora, fauna, and geological features of the oceans; and the proper management of the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument. The organization was a recipient of a 2009 EPA Environmental Award for their community outreach work supporting marine protected areas.

The Refuge System, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is the nation’s largest network of federal lands and waters dedicated to the protection of wildlife and the habitat on which it depends. The Refuge System is composed of 553 national wildlife refuges spanning about 150 million acres. More than 44 million people visit wildlife refuges each year.

The new vision will help the Refuge System implement the best wildlife conservation practices guided by the latest science. The Refuge System’s new vision recognizes the rapid social and environmental changes that have taken place over the last decade or so.

FOMTM is attending the NWR conference to network with like-minded professionals and volunteers in order to bring whatever resources it can back to the local community. Any particular programs that may be launched as a consequence of participation will be announced at http://Marianamonument.blogspot.com/, where you can also follow all other activities that FOMTM is involved on behalf of the community. [I](PR)[/I]