During a Rose Garden event today, President Biden spoke about his administrations efforts to protect Bristol Bay and support conservation across the country, saying that “when we conserve our country’s national gifts, we’re not only protecting the livelihoods of people who depend on them…we’re also protecting…the heart and the soul of our…national pride.”
Calling efforts to protect Bristol Bay “an example of my administration’s commitment to conservation,” the President noted his Jan. 2021 Executive Order to, among other things, establish the goal of conserving at least 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
In doing so, he said “[w]e’re making strong progress toward that goal,” adding that in 2021 alone, “I protected more lands and waters than any President since John F. Kennedy.” The President also noted his signing of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, calling them “the largest investments in climate, environmental justice, and conservation ever anywhere, period.”
Additionally, the President highlighted his decision to restore prohibitions on commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, the initiation of a process to designate a new national marine sanctuary in the Pacific Remote Islands region (which he said would be the “largest ocean area on the planet with the highest level of protection”), and his decision to prohibit new oil and natural gas leasing throughout U.S. Arctic waters.
