This week, the RSPB and our colleagues at the Marine Reserves Coalition launched our campaign for the creation of marine reserves around the UK Overseas Territories of Ascension, Pitcairn, and the South Sandwich Islands.
In support of this campaign, we’re very excited to be hosting National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr Sylvia Earle in Parliament today, just hours after she touches down from a week of diving around Ascension Island. To tell you more about this campaign, I’ll hand you over to my colleague Tim Stowe, Director of International Operations:
“Our 14 Overseas Territories are home to 94% of all the flora and fauna for which the UK is responsible – and a whopping 87% of our threatened species as well. That’s why the RSPB has been working for over 20 years in the UKOTs, supporting territory governments and building capacity on the ground to ensure that this precious natural heritage is conserved.
Endangered Green Turtle nesting on Ascension Island (S Weber)
When seeking to protect the rich biodiversity of these territories, it is often the case that the most pressing need for conservation intervention is not on the islands themselves, but in the waters that surround them. So it is with Ascension Island, where 800 people have the enormous challenge and responsibility of managing a rich marine area larger than Germany.
The UK Government doesn’t allow anyone to live permanently on Ascension, yet also expects the temporary residents to manage this vast marine area at their own cost on its behalf. The local Government therefore had to sell licences to Taiwanese long-liners from 2010-2013 in order to try and fund their marine management, but was unable to ensure against overfishing or bycatch of turtle and shark species.
This fishery has now been closed whilst Ascension reviews its marine options, but, sadly, reports indicate that previously abundant large shark species such as hammerheads have mostly disappeared from Ascension’s inshore waters, not yet to return.
Therefore we’re excited to be working alongside partners from the Blue Marine Foundation, Greenpeace UK, the Marine Conservation Society, the National Geographic Society, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Zoological Society of London on the Great British Oceans campaign.
We are calling on the British government to protect the seas around the territories of the Pitcairn Islands, Ascension Island, and the South Sandwich Islands by creating large scale fully protected offshore marine reserves. In Pitcairn’s case, this would create the largest marine reserve in the world, and Ascension would boast the Atlantic’s largest.
Just today our Head of Overseas Territories, Jonathan Hall, has returned from a visit to Ascension Island with National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr Sylvia Earle, and the IUCN’s Marine Vice-Chair of the World Commission on Protected Areas, Prof Dan Laffoley.
Over the last week they have dived in Ascension’s fertile waters, met with the Island Council, Administrator, and government departments, and hosted a premier of the Mission Blue film, which documents Dr Earle’s work advocating for the protection of the ocean over the last six decades.
Ascension Island's Darwin Marine Team (Dan Laffoley, 2015)
This afternoon I’ll be in parliament to hear Dr Earle speak alongside BBC TV presenter and explorer Paul Rose, who visited the Pitcairn Islands last year. We’ll be launching our coalition statement of support, which has been endorsed by over 100 conservation and environmental organisations, as well as marine scientists and high profile individuals, such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and our own Vice President Chris Packham.
It would be wonderful if as many RSPB supporters as possible could join with us in this campaign to ask the government to step up to its responsibility and protect Britain’s amazing seas. Please do show your support by visiting our coalition website at www.greatbritishoceans.org and sharing a message of support on social media using the hashtag #GBoceans.”
Please do support this campaign and I'll let you know how we get on.
Great work by all concerned and the very best of luck in the campaign. Let's hope the Government responds by declaring these much needed marine conservation zones around these Overseas Territories before the next General Election. Should they do so it might help to salvage, at least a little, what has turned out, on the whole, to be a pretty poor record for nature conservation during their five year term. If these zones were to be declared by the Government on top of the current project to rid South Georgia of rats and the RSPB project, in a year or so's time, to rid Gough Island of large mice our UK wildlife in the south Atlantic and the Pacific would really receive a much needed boost.