In a boon to commercial fishermen, conservationists and Native Alaskans, President Obama on Tuesday withdrew the waters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay from oil and gas development, vowing to protect the world’s biggest sockeye salmon fishery.

Calling the region “one of America’s greatest natural resources and a massive economic engine, not only for Alaska but for America,” Obama said he was taking it “off the bidder’s block” and would “make sure that it is preserved into the future.”

“Bristol Bay has supported Native Americans in the Alaska region for centuries,” Obama said in a video message released Tuesday. “It supports $2 billion in the commercial fishing industry. It supplies America with 40% of its wild-caught seafood. It is a natural wonder, and it’s something that’s just too precious to be putting out to the highest bidder.”

In 2010, Obama declared the verdant, 52,234-square-mile area off Alaska’s southwest coast temporarily off-limits to oil and gas leasing, a protection that was set to expire in 2017. Tuesday’s action safeguards the important habitat area indefinitely.

The area, also known as the North Aleutian Basin Outer Continental Shelf, has never been the site of offshore drilling, although the Interior Department opened it up to exploration and development in 1986 with the controversial Lease Sale 92.

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