Sharon Guynup

After weeks of damaging midnight environmental rulings that have removed crucial endangered species protections, restrictions on mining the Grand Canyon, and allowed leasing of public lands for oil development, President Bush protected a whopping 195,000 square miles of the central Pacific’s tropical blue heart. With the stroke of a pen, he created the Mariana, Rose Atoll and Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments—and set aside an area the size of his home state of Texas, the largest swath of protected ocean on the planet.