MPA News

Notes & News

Caribbean nations meet to build partnerships for marine ecosystem management As part of a Caribbean-wide project to encourage sustainable development through integrated watershed and marine ecosystem-based management, representatives of more than 20 nations met in Miami (US) in March to build regional partnerships with these goals in mind. The meeting – titled the “White Water to Blue Water (WW2BW) Partnership Conference” and arising from a regional initiative of the same name – aimed to help Caribbean governments, NGOs, donors, and private industry find ways to address common challenges. Generated were partnerships to coordinate use of resources and improve communication among…

Acoustic Tracking of Fish: How Continuous Data on Fish Movement Could Change the Planning of MPAs

To design effective MPAs, planners need information on the habitats and species they want to protect. Data on the home range of a particular fish species, for example, can be invaluable for siting marine reserves to protect that species. Over the past several decades, scientists have tracked fish movement through mark-and-recapture techniques or following fish with scuba divers – generating useful, though incomplete, information. But technological advances in the past decade have enabled what could be a key to effective MPA design: continuous data on individual fish movements over time, including in and out of proposed protected areas. This tracking…

UN Biodiversity Meeting Calls for Networks of MPAs

In February, delegates from 161 nations met in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for biannual talks on strategies to conserve global biodiversity. The meeting – the Seventh Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP-7) – featured decisions on international protected-area planning and the conservation of marine and coastal ecosystems, among other items. MPA News invited Bud Ehler, Vice-Chair (Marine) for the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, to explain the implications for MPAs: By Bud Ehler, IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas The new protected areas objective adopted by the Parties to the Convention on Biological…

MPA Perspective: When Is Coral Reef Rehabilitation an Appropriate Use of MPA Funding?

Editor’s note: When MPA habitats become severely degraded, active rehabilitation by management may be desirable – or necessary, in some cases – to restore ecological functions formerly provided. Such rehabilitation can be controversial, however, when artificial technologies are applied. The concept of “naturalness”, which management normally strives to protect with an MPA, becomes somewhat blurred. Mark Erdmann is USAID’s marine protected areas advisor for the 890-km2 Bunaken National Park, located in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. (USAID is the US Agency for International Development.) In the following piece, he proposes that the use of artificial habitats for rehabilitation is sometimes appropriate, and…

Notes & News

New report provides options for financing MPAs Looking to supplement your MPA’s funding? A new report provides a list of 30 mechanisms for financing the conservation of marine biodiversity. Published by WWF (an NGO) through its Center for Conservation Finance, Financing Marine Conservation: A Menu of Options outlines potential sources of funding, with brief examples of how the mechanisms have been used worldwide. For readers who want more information on particular mechanisms – ranging from conservation trust funds, to tourism entry fees, to fishing and mining access fees, and more – the report provides web links to external sources of…

Building “Learning Networks” Among MPAs: Projects Aim to Help Managers Learn from Each Other

MPA practitioners can benefit in learning from the experience of their peers, particularly when addressing similar challenges. But with MPAs spread out across the world, the transfer of knowledge among practitioners can be a challenge in itself. Without ways of networking peers – and their knowledge – across potentially great distances, the planning and management of marine protected areas can suffer. Various projects are now addressing this issue. This month, MPA News describes two efforts aimed at building “learning networks” among MPA practitioners. Although these networks are still works-in-progress, they offer examples for practitioners elsewhere. Networking locally managed marine areas…

Designing an MPA Learning Network: Interview with Nick Salafsky

Assisting with overseeing the design and implementation of the LMMA Network (described in the previous article) is a US-based not-for-profit organization, Foundations for Success (FOS). Established in 2000, FOS aims to improve the practice of nature conservation by coordinating the sharing of lessons learned among networks of practitioners. Nick Salafsky, a founder of FOS, works closely with the LMMA Network as well as other learning networks worldwide. Below, MPA News asks him about some of the considerations that go into designing such a network. MPA News: Learning networks for practitioners can take many forms, including informal discussion groups. The LMMA…

Ecuadorian Government Agrees to Review Galapagos Fisheries Regulations Following Seizure of Park Facilities by Fishermen

Editor’s note: The social and political unrest facing the Galapagos Marine Reserve, described in the article below, holds serious potential consequences for one of the world’s best-known MPAs. It also reflects challenges this MPA shares with other sites worldwide, including the continual pressure to readjust the balance of resource use and conservation amid changing economic and ecological circumstances. In late February, the Ecuadorian government agreed to review and potentially change fisheries regulations in the Galapagos Marine Reserve as part of a negotiated agreement to end the latest in a series of protests by local fishermen. Several dozen fishermen seized and…

Letter to the Editor

Dear MPA News: In supporting what Adrian Phillips said in the February MPA News (MPA News 5:7) about failures in local management, I’d like to quote from my paper in the proceedings of the 2000 International Coral Reef Symposium in Bali entitled “The Development and Establishment of Coral Reef Marine Protected Areas”, as follows: “Design and management of MPAs must be both top-down and bottom-up. A common feature of Western thought, which many Asians find amusing, is the ‘either-or’ mentality. This is demonstrated by the adversarial legal systems that prevail in many Western countries and by the tendency to think…

Notes & News

Report: Most coral reefs may disappear by 2050 due to climate change By 2050, coral cover will decrease to less than 5% on most existing, shallow-water coral reefs if global carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced and sea surface temperatures continue to rise as a result, according to a report released in February by WWF Australia and the Queensland (Australia) Tourism Industry Council. Conducted by reef biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of Queensland University and economist Hans Hoegh-Guldberg, the study focuses primarily on anticipated effects of human-induced climate change on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Under the best-case scenario, write the authors,…