US Plans to Expand War Games in Ecologically Rich Mariana Islands
Naval training exercises threaten local communities and environment
The United States military assumed control the Mariana
Islands during World War II and has been waging war on the environment
there ever since.
Recent proposals
to expand the range for Navy training exercises in this archipelago in
the northwestern Pacific Ocean represent the latest frontier in this
battle, and could be devastating to local communities as well as
wildlife.
By many accounts, military trainings have already had a tremendous
impact on the region that’s composed of two US jurisdictions — the
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the territory of Guam.
Military bombing exercises have destroyed much of at least one island —
Farallon de Medinilla — and naval exercises have impacted large tracts
of open ocean.
In 2010, the Navy training range in the region was expanded to
encompass roughly 500,000 square nautical miles of ocean. “Right now, it
is the largest range in [Department of Defense’s] inventory,” says
Leevin Camacho, a member of
We are Guåhan, a cultural and environmental justice advocacy group in Guam.
The Navy still wants more, and is now asking to nearly double the
training range, extending it to 984,469 square nautical miles. It has
named this expansion — which is part of the “
Pacific Pivot,”
a strategy aimed at shifting the US military’s focus to the
Asia-Pacific region — the “Mariana Island Training and Testing” (MITT)
area.
“[The expanded area] would be larger than Washington, Oregon,
California, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Montana and New Mexico combined,”
Camacho says.
“The Navy’s whole approach to the Marianas is shoot first and ask
questions later,” says Michal Jasny, senior policy analyst at the
Natural Resources Defense Council. “We know very little about the
populations of whales, dolphins, and other marine life around the
Marianas. Yet the navy is proceeding with a massive militarization of
the islands and surrounding waters. It is grossly irresponsible to
proceed in this way.”
What we do know doesn’t bode well. “We know marine mammals depend on
hearing to find mates, to find food, to avoid predators, to situate
themselves in the ocean — in short, for virtually everything they need
to do to survive and reproduce in the wild,” explains Jasny. “[We also
know] that navy sonar has a range of impacts, from disrupting foraging,
to causing hearing loss, to fatally injuring whales and driving them
onto shore.”
The Navy estimates that expanded training activities would cause
59 whales and dolphins
to suffer permanent hearing damage every year. Thousands more would
suffer temporary hearing damage. Other impacts include those on sea
turtles, fish, marine habitat, and the
Mariana Trench Marine National Monument.
Environmental activists say the exercises would violate the National
Environmental Policy Act and other US environmental laws.
In addition to this ocean-based training expansion,
a separate Navy proposal
targets the vibrant Pagan Island for destructive military training
exercises. This island was formerly inhabited, but was evacuated in 1981
during a volcanic eruption. It is now home to roughly a dozen people
and many former residents still hope to return and reestablish their
lives there. The island has numerous endemic and endangered species. The
Navy has not yet released a draft environmental impact statement for
its proposed activities on Pagan Island. However, advocates have
launched a campaign against the exercises.
“[Pagan] is culturally important, anthropologically important, and
biologically important,” says Dr. Michael Hadfield, a zoology professor
at the University of Hawaii. “[And] when the military takes an island
for live-fire training, they destroy it.”
A local human rights lawyer, Julian Aguon, underscores this point: “I
situate what is going on now as… the latest incarnation of a much
longer geopolitical process, and that’s been the militarization, the
nuclearization, and colonization of this whole side of the ocean, this
whole western Pacific.”
“This is our home,” adds Camacho. “We really look at it not just as
fighting for dolphins and whales, but we are trying to protect resources
that have belonged to our people for thousands of years, before the US
military.”
The Navy is currently accepting comments on the
Mariana Islands Training and Testing Draft Environmental Impact Statement, which assesses the impact of the expanded ocean training range. Voice your concern about the proposal
here. All comments must be submitted by December 11, 2013.
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