Further Delays to Safeguarding Sealife
Guest blogger: Clare Reed, RSPB Marine Conservation Officer (North West)
You may remember at the beginning of this year I asked you to write to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to ask that they designate a network of Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) as soon as possible in order to protect England’s threatened marine wildlife and habitats.
Defra received over 40,000 responses between December and March 2013 during their public consultation on MCZs in English and Welsh offshore waters, including from the RSPB and other wildlife organizations that were keen to ensure that sites important for wildlife are designated asap. We also know that many RSPB supporters also responded – thank you for your help and support!
On Tuesday this week the UK Government published a summary of the responses to this consultation along with a statement to Parliament from Fisheries Minister, Richard Benyon.
Unfortunately the publications do not make encouraging reading!
Disappointingly, it has confirmed that the 31 sites being considered won’t be designated until sometime after September and there was no information on next steps for additional protected sites (for instance, the 96 that remain of the 127 recommended MCZs). Not the urgency or clarity that we were calling for following our joint-NGO hand-in to 10 Downing Street of over 350,000 pledges calling for urgent designation of MCZs and a commitment to a timetable for further sites.
Even more depressing is the news that MCZs for “mobile species” such as dolphins and basking sharks are still being rejected with an emphasis being put on protection via “sectoral measures” (such as fisheries management and protected species licensing). This is despite a report that clarified that protected sites do benefit mobile species in those places and times of the year when they congregate (e.g. key feeding, breeding and nursery grounds).
Specifically in the case of seabirds, MCZs are not going to be considered for nationally important populations of seabirds until all the sites of international importance (i.e. Special Protection Areas under the EU Birds Directive) have been identified and designated. There is no timescale mentioned for this and we feel this is both a poor excuse and a poor use of resources – the identification of sites of both national and international importance for seabirds would be much more efficient if done in parallel!
It looks as if we have a long road ahead of us before seabirds and other sealife get the protection they so badly need in English waters. Hopefully the forthcoming consultation on Marine Protected Areas in Scottish seas will be a better example of how governments should protect marine wildlife. Thank you again for your continued support.