MPA News
MPA Network Is Proposed for SE Australia; Will Be Integrated with National Program to Reduce Fishing Effort
The Australian government released a proposal in December 2005 for a MPA network covering 171,000 km2 of Commonwealth waters in the southeast marine region of Australia. The Minister for the Environment and Heritage, Senator Ian Campbell, called the proposed network “the first representative network of deepwater MPAs in the world.” As proposed, it would account for 14% of Commonwealth waters in the region – the first to undergo a region-by-region process of establishing a national representative network of MPAs by 2012. The southeast region includes Tasmania, Victoria, eastern South Australia, and far southern New South Wales. The government has worked…
MPA Perspective: Protecting the Least-Protected Places on Earth: The Open Oceans
Editor’s note: Elliott A. Norse is president of Marine Conservation Biology Institute in Bellevue, Washington, USA, and a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation. He and Larry B. Crowder are editors of Marine Conservation Biology: The Science of Maintaining the Sea’s Biodiversity (Island Press 2005), which features a chapter by them, Kristina Gjerde, David Hyrenbach, Callum Roberts, Carl Safina and Michael E. Soule on protected areas for pelagic megafauna. The following essay by Norse is based on a presentation he gave at the First International Marine Protected Areas Congress in October 2005 in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. By Elliott A. Norse The…
MPA Perspective: A Marine Reserve Manifesto
Editor’s note: Bill Ballantine is a marine biologist at the Leigh Marine Laboratory, University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has advocated the concept of no-take marine reserves since the 1960s and helped promote many of the existing reserves in New Zealand waters. In the April 2003 edition of MPA News (4:9, “Scientific Principles for Marine Reserve Systems”), Ballantine outlined a set of scientific principles he described as necessary for the planning of systems of no-take marine reserves. By Bill Ballantine Marine reserves have been discussed for many years, and there are now examples in many countries. We know that they…
Notes & News
Correction Due to an editorial error, the lead article of the December 2005/January 2006 edition of MPA News (“Sacred MPAs: Where Protected Areas Hold Spiritual Value for Stakeholders, and How This Affects Management”) contained inaccuracies about the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site. A corrected version of the article was posted on the MPA News website on 20 December. Among the corrections: the name “Gwaii Haanas” refers to the southern portion of the Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) archipelago on Canada’s Pacific coast, not to the entire archipelago. MPA News sincerely apologizes for the errors. New Zealand…
Sacred MPAs: Where Protected Areas Hold Spiritual Value for Stakeholders, and How This Affects Management
Most of the discussion on marine protected areas focuses on their biological and material worth: how MPAs can be used to restore habitats and maintain biodiversity, make fisheries more sustainable, attract tourism, and so forth. For many people worldwide, however, protected areas are perceived not so much for these values but for something less tangible: as landscapes or seascapes of the Creation. Inspiring awe and appreciation for nature as the work or embodiment of a higher power, the spiritual value of protected areas can play an important role in planning and management – and has done so for hundreds of…
“We are part of nature…not its steward”: Interview with Allen Putney
Allen Putney has more than three decades of international experience in the planning, management, and financing of protected areas. He leads the Task Force on Cultural and Spiritual Values for the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA). He also co-edited, with David Harmon, the book The Full Value of Parks: From Economics to the Intangible (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003). Below, MPA News speaks with him about religion, protected areas, and the place of humans in nature. MPA News: In The Full Value of Parks, you write that religious traditions that developed in the Middle East tend to view nature…
MPA Perspective: Paper Parks in the Philippines: Improved Information Tells a New Story
Editor’s note: Alan White is president of Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation, a Philippine NGO, and Anna Meneses is coordinator of the organization’s Marine Protected Area Project, described in the following essay. The project is supported by the Pew Fellows Program in Marine Conservation (an initiative of the Pew Institute for Ocean Science) as well as the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, (US) National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency, and the Fisheries Improved for Sustainable Harvest Project of the United States Agency for International Development (implemented by Tetra Tech EM Inc. in the Philippines). By Alan T. White and Anna Blesilda…
A Year After the Tsunami: Surin Marine National Park, Thailand
Prior to the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, Surin Marine National Park had a reputation for offering some of the best shallow-water reef diving in Thailand. Located northwest of Phuket, the 135-km2 park attracted 30,000 visitors each year. Park management had a zoning plan that protected the park’s area of highest biodiversity, and an information center that instructed visitors about the ecosystem they were experiencing. The tsunami changed the park. The reef area with the strictest protection was heavily damaged, and the information center was washed away. One year later, park management is still working to respond to the…
Letters to the Editor
Distinction between “socio-economics” and human dimensions Dear MPA News: As managers and scientists increasingly realize that resource management is driven by social values, the roles of social science and its practitioners become more established – if not yet adequately represented – in natural resource management. As Graeme Kelleher points out, social science factors are a major force behind the eventual acceptance, or rejection, of MPAs (“Letter: Socio-economic factors determine MPA fate”, MPA News 7:1). However, the term socio-economics – used widely to refer to the social science factors warranting consideration – is an incomplete descriptor of the full range of…
Notes & News
More IMPAC1 coverage to come This edition of MPA News contains several topics that were presented or discussed at the First International Marine Protected Areas Congress (IMPAC1), held in Geelong, Australia, in October 2005. We will continue to report on outcomes from IMPAC1 (http://www.impacongress.org) in future editions. Funding available for mooring buoy programs in Gulf of Mexico, Wider Caribbean Projects to install and maintain mooring buoys for conservation of coral reef ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico and Wider Caribbean Region are eligible for grants through the Anchors Away! program, administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) through…