On the 26th November I promoted an important meeting that was about to be held by the Arun and Rother Rivers Trust (ARRT) to discuss the management of the Arun catchment.
The event actually took place on 6th December and was a great success.
Hosted by ARRT, the Arun and Rother Connections (ARC) Partnership and the South Downs National Park Authority, the event provided an opportunity for people to learn more about the catchment. It was an open event, held over two sessions at Pulborough Village Hall which encouraged people from within and around the catchment to debate and discuss their concerns for the rivers and streams, the different ways of managing them and to identify funding possibilities and opportunities for working together.
Sir Sebastian Anstruther, Chairman of the Arun & Rother Rivers Trust, said of the event: “I’m delighted that so many people took the time to attend our event, which shows just how important our rivers and streams are to people living in and around the catchment. “It was great to hear views from a range of people who work or live by the water - farmers, landowners, anglers and those who just enjoy living in and around them.
“Our local rivers are precious and important for our economy, health, well-being, leisure and for the wider environment, but they are under increasing threat. By working together we can develop a clear vision for a rich and thriving river system and the views, contacts and discussions from this recent revent will help us shape how we do that. We will continue to keep local people informed and involved as we progress with our work.”
I went to the evening session and was delighted (although not surprised) by the positive attitude by all in the room. I am lucky in that I live in the area as well - so it is my home-patch. The meeting helped confirm my long-held belief that if you get real people in a room talking about real issues in their local patch then it is not too difficult to get a consensus - no matter what sector or special interest group people feel they come from.
A good day, and congratulations to all who organised it.
Monday 17 December 2012
Friday 14 December 2012
A pitiful attempt to save our seas.
I am bitterly disappointed by the government’s
feeble attempt at marine nature conservation coming from the recent
announcement about Marine Conservation Zones.
Defra has now released its long-awaited
consultation on the next stages of designation of Marine Conservation Zones in
English and non-devolved waters and proposes to designate only 31 of the 127
sites recommended by experts and stakeholders at the end of August last year. This is less than 25% of what experts say was
the minimum required in order to deliver an effective marine ecological
network.
The
127 recommended Marine Conservation Zones were chosen after two years of hard
work by more than one million stakeholders from all sectors of the marine
environment and at a cost of over £8.8 million to Government.
In
Sussex only 3 of the 10
proposed sites are going forward and none at all are progressing in Hampshire.
You
can visit these zones on our interactive map and see some of the wonders they
are home to at www.wildlifetrusts.org/MCZmap
Marine
Conservation Zones should have protected the species and habitats found within
them from the most damaging and degrading activities whilst mostly allowing sustainable
activity to continue. The network was
designed to ensure that we don’t end up with isolated and vulnerable sites and to
ensure that the wide range of marine habitats found in UK seas are
protected. Failure to designate all but
a very small proportion of sites recommended by these stakeholders will mean
that we lack the ecologically coherent network that our seas so badly need to
recover.
The
UK ’s
marine habitats are rich and diverse but largely unprotected - which is why The
Wildlife Trusts spent a decade promoting the Marine and Coastal Access Act,
eventually adopted in 2009. This included
a commitment to designate this ecologically coherent marine network of protected
areas.
Our
surrounding seas have an astonishingly varied range of submerged landscapes
which support wonderful marine life: from cold water coral beds to sponge
meadows, canyons and sandbanks. Without these there simply wouldn't be
any fish, let alone fantastic jewel anemones, seahorses, dolphins, brittlestars
and all the other wild and extraordinary creatures which are part of a healthy
marine ecosystem.
Despite
the variety of fantastic species and habitats, our marine environment is in severe
decline. In the last 400 years, two
species of whale and dolphin have gone extinct in UK
waters and of the 11 commonly sighted species found in UK waters, all
are in decline. Basking shark numbers
have declined by 95% and species such as the common skate, once abundant in our
waters are now critically endangered. For
too long, we have taken this environment for granted, taking too much, with too
little care, destroying fragile habitats.
Designation
of an ecologically coherent network would have provided our seas with the
protection they need to recover from past abuses and help them to be restored
to their full potential.
This
shirking of responsibility is now a significant failure of government.
Whilst
many fishermen have campaigned against MCZs, I do not blame the fishermen. Indeed they have been the greatest victims of
failure in regulation for decades. An
effective network of MCZs would have stimulated the recovery of marine life
including commercially exploitable fish.
Some have presented MCZs as something that is being taken away from the
fishermen when in fact the opposite is the case. Evidence from around the world shows that even
where areas are restricted to fishing the local seas become so much more productive
that far more fish are caught overall.
In other words, looking after the marine environment properly provides
more fish, not less.
Also,
I know our local MPs have been active in supporting the Marine Act and in
promoting MCZs.
Lack
of information has been blamed but this is a pure smoke-screen. After all this time, expense and the
involvement of so many experts it is about as clear as it can be that this
functional network of protected areas is vital to restore Living Seas.
So
what has gone wrong?
I
think the blame lies on the promotion of half-baked ideas of the socio-economic
impacts, driven largely by The Treasury and the Chancellor of the
Exchequer. A bland mantra promoting the
removal of (perceived) blocks to (undefined) economic growth seems to be
thwarting all attempts of more rational progress. In spite of good work being
done elsewhere in government, they seem to have lost touch with the
fundamentals that underpin the country’s economy – the environment. Without fish you can’t have a fishing
industry. Reducing exploitation of
something that is over-exploited is a sensible economic decision, not one that blocks
the economy. To do otherwise is like
insisting on chopping more trees down once the forest has gone, like digging a
deeper mine even though you know there are no more minerals or like trying to
extract more water out of a well that is already dry. Closing eyes and carrying on regardless is
economically disastrous as well as being ecologically devastating. The sea is far too important to allow
second-level issues to subvert a far more important primary objective – that of
protecting the resource on which we all rely.
The Wildlife Trusts will be responding to the Government consultation
at the end of January. We will be
publishing our recommendations on the consultation on our webpage. Meanwhile, we urge those interested in
responding to the consultation, to sign up to be an MCZ friend so that we can
contact you when we have considered our response to the consultation. Go to www.wildlifetrusts.org/MCZfriends
to sign up.
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