Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said yesterday that his May 3, 2016, letter to President Barack Obama on the proposed expansion of the marine conservation areas in Hawaii was to \u201cshare our story\u201d with the CNMI\u2019s own lagging marine monument.<\/p>\n
Torres said he had talked with \u201csome folks\u201d in Hawaii who claimed the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument was being expanded for reasons \u201cthey don\u2019t know why,\u201d and that there was \u201cno additional assistance or rationale for expanding it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torres noted that during the creation of Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, \u201chundreds of millions of dollars, jobs, centers\u201d were advertised to the CNMI.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of that has occurred. It is going on eight years,\u201d Torres told reporters yesterday. The MTMNT was created in 2008.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me,\u201d Torres added, \u201cwe are sharing our story here on I how felt how the monument was done. So my concern is, we have the Marianas Trench Monument that was done by president Bush [with] almost ten years now with almost nothing to show for. That\u2019s my concern.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torres\u2019 earlier letter asks Obama to also focus monuments in existence in order to fulfill the existing mandates of the Marianas monument, while the President considers the merits of expanding the monument in Hawaii.<\/p>\n
\u201cProtecting ocean resources is a necessary consideration, but so too is the follow through to complete what has already been started,\u201d Torres said in the letter. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gov. Ralph DLG Torres said yesterday that his May 3, 2016, letter to President Barack…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26,1174,53],"class_list":["post-227492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi","tag-marianas-trench-monument","tag-president-barack-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}