In addition to the usual (and vital) proposed additions to the National Wilderness Preservation System and the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, Huffman’s draft legislation proposes several innovative and novel congressional designations that call for ecological restoration, nature conservation, and/or increased recreation.

As marine national monuments go, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts (NEC&S) Marine National Monument proclaimed by President Obama in 2016 is rather puny. Yes, it’s comparable to the size of Connecticut, but Connecticut, after all, is the forty-eighth largest state. President Obama generally went big with marine national monuments before he went home, but not in this case. Why not?

Congress has not reauthorized or amended the NMSA since 2000. Now would not be a good time to try. Recent history, under both a Republican and a Democratic president, has shown that serious large-scale ocean conservation occurs only with the use of the Antiquities Act.

The Three Sisters, individually known today as South Sister, Middle Sister and North Sister, and in early days as Faith, Hope and Charity. The 283,630-acre Three Sisters Wilderness is still a unit of the National Wilderness Preservation System, but is no longer a unit of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves.