The New Hawaiian Park You Proly Won’t Ever See

We celebrated the Bush Administration’s recent effort to make a fine addition to the nation’s national natural heritage. They created the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument...which I’ve since learned is likely to be called something else entirely…and that’s a good thing. But as I mentioned in the piece, one of the things about this new area that seems to escape the notice of those who celebrate the addition is that most of us will never even come close to this place.  As this piece makes clear, unlike Mount Rushmore or the Statue of Liberty, the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands “will never be a place visitors can see by just packing the kids into the car for a week”. It seems even the Hawaiians themselves are unclear how much access they will have.

The main reason is that the islands are so remote, and spread out…across 1,400 miles of the Pacific to be exact. In fact, there have been no public flights at the region’s sole airport, on Midway Atoll, since 2002. I wonder if that will change. It’s an odd concept, having this place preserved ,which is something everyone can agree on, and yet having it be so unreachable. And on the one hand, it would be great to start up a tourism system to allow people to see it ,but on the other a shame that we would expose a place now celebrated for its natural pristine beauty to the ravages of tourism. What to do?