A New Marine Sanctuary Off California Will Be Co-Managed by Indigenous Peoples

[Judi Lynn]

NOAA designated the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary this month, following a decade of advocacy by supporters. The protected site will be finalized after a 45-day review period

Alexa Robles-Gil
Daily Correspondent

October 21, 2024 4:39 p.m.



Aerial view of Government Point, located within Point Conception State Marine Reserve and the newly designated Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary NOAA


Along 116 miles of central California’s stunning shoreline, a new national marine sanctuary aims to protect coastal and ocean waters and the homeland of the Northern Chumash Tribe. The marine sanctuary will be the country’s 17th—but it represents a key milestone as the first one to be nominated for protection by Indigenous people.

The 4,500-square-mile-sanctuary protects at-risk species such as shorebirds, whales, dolphins, sea turtles and sea otters. Its official designation from the Biden-Harris administration this month came after more than a decade-long push from the Northern Chumash Tribal Council and conservation groups for a protected area.
Now, the sanctuary is undergoing a legally required 45-day review period, but it’s expected to be finalized by December 15.

“We are almost there,” Violet Sage Walker, chairwoman for the Northern Chumash Tribal Council, says in a statement from the sanctuary, “and the significance of our collective effort will make history.”

Known as the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, the newly designated site stretches from the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in San Luis Obispo to the Gaviota Coast in Santa Barbara County. It will be protected from oil drilling and undersea mining, and the new safeguards will help conserve the region’s kelp forests, beaches, reefs and more than 200 NOAA-documented shipwrecks.

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More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-new-marine-sanctuary-off-california-will-be-co-managed-by-indigenous-peoples-180985301/

[hunter]

1. The sanctuary might have been larger if not for the proposed wind farm.

The designated site is smaller than the originally proposed sanctuary, which encompassed about 7,000 square miles—roughly six times the size of Yosemite National Park. For example, the waters off Morro Bay, north of San Luis Obispo, were not included in the sanctuary despite being in the proposal because of plans to build an offshore wind farm there.

This makes me angry.

We're not going to save the world by trashing it with useless wind and solar "farms" that will only prolong our dependency on filthy natural gas and thus do nothing in the long run to reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses humans dump into earth's atmosphere.

The Chumash people are amazing for having hung onto their culture against all odds. When I was a kid growing up in Southern California, in a community that was 99% white and kept that way by illegal and highly unethical means, it was implied in our history classes that the Chumash were extinct, like dinosaurs. For that reason they could be celebrated because they were politically powerless and irrelevant.

Meanwhile people of Native American ancestry were being pulled over by the cops for Driving While Brown, getting beaten up, etc..

My genocidal Trump supporting MAGA classmates believe the political empowerment of Native American cultures is some kind of demonic resurrection promoted by the Liberal Agenda. In their reality the white people won, winner take all, and their god willed it.