Even his fondest supporters are unlikely to herald George W. Bush as a great conservationist, but with his designation last week of a marine preserve strictly protecting 140,000 square miles of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, he has proven himself at least a distant heir to the great environmental legacy of Republican President Theodore Roosevelt.

A move supported by Hawaii’s Republican governor to protect a remote area with little known economic value, this designation does not greatly stretch the president’s political comfort zone. And yet it is a momentous occasion, at the stroke of a pen setting aside a great coral and volcanic reef system nearly as big as Montana, an area larger than the combined total of all U.S. national parks.

Because of its isolation, few fishing boats ply the waters of Northwestern Hawaii, a 1,400-mile-long string of 10 islands and 100 coral atolls. Those few fishing boats that do make the long trip out to the chain will have five years to conclude operations there, though private and public funds may pay fishermen to leave the area sooner.

This early buy-out is a desirable step. The chain has been virtually denuded of lobsters, while bottom fish also are under increasing pressure. In our world of ever-more scarce natural resources, even this most pristine of areas is being protected none too soon.

It’s interesting to note this preserve was first given some protection by Roosevelt, who set the islands aside for seabirds. President Bill Clinton took the next step, signing a broader executive order that any future president could have revoked. Bush’s decision protects the area in perpetuity.

The situation for marine preserves here on the West Coast obviously is far more politically complex, with many overlapping commercial and sport fisheries. Locally, preserves are more feared than admired by fishing interests and other businesses with long and honorable economic ties to the ocean.

And yet two national ocean commissions, most emphatically the one organized by the Pew Charitable Trusts, recently found marine preserves ultimately are in the best interests of fishermen and seaside communities. By giving fish and other marine species safe harbors in which to repopulate, preserves like the one just approved by the president assure the long-term health and survival of commercial fisheries.

In the long run, there should be a fair and sensible system of marine preserves in all U.S. waters, biological reservoirs that provide “seed stock” for the entire coast. At the same time, giving fish and other ocean dwellers one place all their own is intrinsically the right thing to do.

– Daily Astorian