Brian Clark Howard, National Geographic – “The Obama administration announced Thursday that it will create the largest marine reserve in the world by expanding an existing monument around U.S.-controlled islands and atolls in the central Pacific. The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument will now be nearly 490,000 square miles, about three times the size of California and six times larger than its previous size. The newly expanded monument is also larger than the sum total of all U.S. national parks on land, which add up to a combined 132,000 square miles. Commercial fishing, dumping, and mining will be prohibited in the reserve, but recreational fishing will be allowed with permits, and boaters may visit the area. The protected area that Secretary of State John Kerry announced [September 2014] is actually smaller than the 782,000 square miles that the president initially considered. But environmentalists, preservationists, and conservation groups that had pushed for the expansion called President Barack Obama’s designation a historic victory in their efforts to limit the impact of fishing, drilling, and other activities that threaten some of the world’s most species-rich waters.”