§410qq Findings and Purpose

Summary

Protect the tropical forest, nearby reefs, and the cultural and archaeological sites of American Samoa; keep the flying fox habitat and the forest’s ecological balance; and, while protecting these resources, let visitors enjoy them. Congress found that tropical forests are shrinking worldwide. They contain 50 percent of the world’s plants and animals, help science, medicine, and farming, and make much of the earth’s oxygen. Losing them causes extinctions, less diversity, fewer chances for new medicines and crops, and more carbon dioxide that changes the climate. The American Samoa forest is one of the last undisturbed paleotropical forests and the largest under U.S. control. It hosts one of the last Pacific flying fox populations that pollinate many plants, has important archaeological evidence, and the people of American Samoa want part of it made a national park.