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<DIV class=article-heading><FONT size=5><STRONG>Marine reserves planned around
commercial interests</STRONG></FONT></DIV>
<DIV>Australia's seas tend to be set aside only where mining and fishing are not
affected, study warns.</DIV>
<DIV class=popup-parent data-role="popup-parent"><SPAN class=vcard><A class=fn
href="http://www.nature.com/news/marine-reserves-planned-around-commercial-interests-1.14780?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20140304#auth-1"
data-popup-width="estimate"><FONT color=#000000>Daniel
Cressey</FONT></A></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=pubdate-and-corrections><TIME datetime="2014-02-28" pubdate>28
February 2014</TIME></DIV>
<DIV class="cleared article-tools extra"><A
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color=#000000>http://www.nature.com/news/marine-reserves-planned-around-commercial-interests-1.14780?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20140304</FONT></A></DIV>
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<P>Every year more of the planet is placed under the protection offered by
marine parks and reserves, and Australia has been at the forefront of this
trend. But a review of the country's conservation policies published this week
argues that the areas most in need of protection are being neglected while
politicians cordon off only those spaces that commercial interests are happy to
forgo.</P>
<P>Australia has been engaged in a long-running and controversial effort to
create a network of marine reserves in its national waters, ranging from the
world’s most famous collection of corals at the Great Barrier Reef in the east
to the whale sharks that gather off Ningaloo in the west.</P>
<P>Now an international team argues that these efforts, most of which have come
to fruition only since late 2012, have basically been for naught. Australia’s
newly created marine-reserve network makes “almost no difference to ‘business as
usual’ for most ocean uses”, the researchers write in <I>Aquatic Conservation:
Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems</I><SUP><A id=ref-link-1 class=ref-link
title="Devillers, R. et al. Aquat. Conserv. Mar. Freshwat. Ecosyst. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aqc.2445 (2014)."
href="http://www.nature.com/news/marine-reserves-planned-around-commercial-interests-1.14780?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20140304#b1">1</A></SUP>.</P>
<P>The problem, the authors say, is that the system is mainly ‘residual’ —
meaning that many of the areas placed off limits to commercial exploitation are
those that will create least argument. The researchers looked at a number of
factors in the Australian system of marine protected areas (MPAs), including the
extent to which the newly established areas overlap with pre-existing fisheries
and with areas exploited for the extraction of oil and gas. The team concludes
that Australia’s seas have generally been set aside only where doing so would
not get in the way of commercial uses.</P>
<P>Rodolphe Devillers, a geographer at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St
John’s, Canada, who led the study, says that it demonstrates that the areas that
are being placed under protection appear to be chosen with the aim of
“minimizing conflict between stakeholders that would be politically
inacceptable”. “The fact that MPAs were residual was expected, but the extent to
which they actually are was surprising, if not scary, mostly for the new
Australian reserve system.”</P>
<P>Robert Pressey, a marine scientist at James Cook University in Townsville,
Australia, and a co-author of the study, says that no protected area can be
considered pointless, as “something is always protected”. But, he says,
“residual reservation is also a problem because, to many, it gives the mistaken
appearance of conservation progress.”</P>
<DIV class="related-stories-box box">Callum Roberts, a biologist who studies
MPAs at the University of York, UK, says that he agrees in part with the study’s
conclusions. “They are very right that we have done a really bad job up to now
of protecting places in the thick of the biggest threats to biodiversity,” he
says.</DIV>
<P>However, Roberts says that although a number of “big and remote” MPAs have
been established in areas under little commercial pressure, many smaller MPAs —
including some valuable ones — were hard won. “There are hard efforts underway
to protect intensively used coastal areas too, resulting in many new MPAs every
year. The Pressey paper glosses over them too easily,” he says.</P>
<P>“We need both approaches to run in parallel, but we especially need to get
better at setting up MPAs in areas of intensive use, and giving them a high
level of protection,” Roberts adds.</P>
<P><A
href="http://www.nature.com/news/australia-s-plans-for-sea-havens-flawed-1.12587">Australia’s
marine-reserve plans have already been criticized</A> as inadequate in some
other studies, but have also attracted support for their ambition and the
cohesive network of protection around the entire island that they stand to
produce.</P>
<P>The current Australian government, which inherited the reserve system when it
came to power in 2013, has pledged to look again at the network. Although some
conservationists fear that this is a prelude to reducing the protection offered
in favour of fishing and other commercial interests, Pressey says: “If the
present federal government interprets our analyses correctly — and that would
not be very difficult — then the obvious way to improve the MPA system is to
increase, not reduce, the protection given to ecosystems and species.”</P></DIV>
<DL class=citation>
<DT><A href="javascript:;" jQuery16405263459533318122="8"><STRONG><FONT
color=#000000>References</FONT></STRONG></A></DT></DL></DIV>
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<DIV class=content>
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<LI id=b1>
<P><SPAN class="vcard author"><SPAN class=fn>Devillers, R.</SPAN></SPAN> <I>et
al</I>. <SPAN class=source-title>Aquat. Conserv. Mar. Freshwat.
Ecosyst.</SPAN> <A
href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aqc.2445">http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aqc.2445</A>
(<SPAN class=year>2014</SPAN>). <A class="context-link show"
href="javascript:;">Show
context</A></P></LI></OL></DIV></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>