Pacific Remote Islands Expansion

NOPC united the ocean community around a campaign that resulted in three new monuments protecting 855,000 square miles of ocean habitat. During the Trump Administration, our work focused on defending America’s most special ocean places from rollbacks. With a collaborative, science-based, and inclusive approach, NOPC stands well positioned to work with Indigenous communities, local and national partners and build on previous expansion efforts to extend protections to the two remaining units of PRI.

In the face of the mounting climate and biodiversity crises and in line with the administration’s priority to honor Indigenous and Tribal cultures and practices, President Biden has the authority and opportunity to meet the needs of today. The expansion of the remaining two areas of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to the full extent of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)—an increase of 685,000 square kilometers of new protected area, making it the largest strongly protected MPA network in the world— can protect scores of threatened and endemic marine species, provide for an unparalleled opportunity to better understand climate resilience in some of the least disturbed marine ecosystems on the planet, and preserve a critical cultural voyaging seascape in the U.S. EEZ.