Guam could lose more control over land, waters with proposed critical habitat designation
The question of how much control we really have when it comes to our land and our waters is one we've been asking ourselves for decades. With the fight to keep the live fire training range out of the culturally and historically significant Litekyan area highlights the island's unfortunate position of occasionally being able to offer public input, but never truly having a say in the matter. Department of Agriculture Director Chlesa Muna-Brecht dove into the details of how the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration's Proposed rule on designated critical habitats will make things more difficult for our local agencies.
"We control our territorial waters, but with this critical habitat designation, it makes it so that it's less in our control," she said. "Although it's supposed to be designed to control the effects of the federal government or the impact that they may have, so many of our projects are either federally funded or have a federal nexus meaning they intersect with the federal government at some point on some level. Even private projects, I mean think of big housing developments. Those have a federal nexus even though they're 100 percent privately funded."
The proposed rule would deem the waters surrounding the island, except the waters within the Department of Defense's military bases, all in efforts to preserve certain endangered coral species, but the question is, would establishing a critical habitat do anything but add more red tape for local agencies to go through when doing their preservation projects?
"We want to know, is the critical habitat effective, is it gonna work," Muna-Brecht said. "Is it gonna bring back coral that we haven't seen in our waters for more than a decade? Has it worked anywhere else, because when we asked NOAA that question, they couldn't tell us that answer. They designated critical habitat in the Caribbean, Atlantic Caribbean, and they don't even know if it's effective. They wanted to designate Critical Habitat around the entire island, even in areas that are not places where coral even grow. Talofofo Bay is the perfect example. They have that marked as an area for critical habitat but there's no coral at Talofofo Bay, which is why everyone surfs there.
While the overall intention for critical habitat designation is commendable, the execution is a different story.
"We already have our marine preserves, we already have strict laws and rules about what you can do in the preserves," Muna-Brecht said. "About how you're not supposed to take coral or disturb the coral, but that doesn't mean anything when they're invoking the Endangered Species Act, the Endangered Species Act means if somethings already listed as an endangered species, then they have to automatically designate critical habitat. So they're following the rules they're supposed to do, but their process is flawed and they should have done better in consulting us. I mean, when you look at that map, like, automatically, it feels like something is squeezing your heart. Like we're losing another piece of our control over our own land and waters to the federal government, and then you see that DOD is all in the red and they're okay and then you look at all the other islands and it's the same way."
Muna-Brecht said she's working with other islands also on the list for critical habitat, to ensure they offer up a firm united stance on what is reasonable and acceptable, to be submitted in letters to NOAA.