Thousands Call on UK Government to Create World’s Largest Marine Reserve
08.03.2010 by chagosadmin
Press Release
More than 275,000 people and leading scientific and conservation organisations from the UK and around the world have called on the UK government to establish a protected area in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which is comprised of the Chagos Islands and its surrounding waters.
If established, the Chagos Protected Area would be the largest marine reserve in the world and play a vital role in fulfilling the UK’s global international conservation commitments.
The support for a marine reserve comes as the UK government closes its three-month public consultation period today on future management of the Chagos Islands. The government will now consider the creation of a Chagos Protected Area, a designation that would safeguard the rich marine biodiversity of the islands and their surrounding waters by prohibiting extractive activities, such as fishing. A final decision is expected sometime this spring.
“Britain has an historic opportunity to protect this very special and rare place, which is comparable in importance to the Galapagos Islands or the Great Barrier Reef,” said William Marsden, chairman of the Chagos Conservation Trust and a member of the Chagos Environment Network (CEN). “The public and the scientific community have spoken, and now it is up to the government to secure the UK’s ocean legacy.”
The CEN is a collaboration of leading conservation and scientific organisations seeking to protect the rich biodiversity of the Chagos Islands and its surrounding waters, including The Chagos Conservation Trust, The Linnean Society of London, The Marine Conservation Society, the Pew Environment Group, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Zoological Society of London, and Professor Charles Sheppard of the University of Warwick.
The Chagos form an archipelago comprising 55 islands spread over 210,000 square miles – an area twice the size of the UK’s land surface. Due to their remoteness, the islands have some of the cleanest seas in the world and contain as much as half of the Indian Ocean’s remaining healthy coral reefs, making it one of the most ecologically sound reef systems on the planet.
“The world’s oceans are under increasing stress from overfishing, climate change, and pollution. Few areas around the world still exist that are largely unspoiled, and the waters around the Chagos Islands are one of them,” said Alistair Gammell with the Pew Environment Group, a member of the CEN. “A decision to designate this area as a highly protected marine reserve would make the UK a global leader in ocean protection.”
In addition to thousands of people in the UK and around the world, many leading scientific and conservation organizations, including some from the Indian Ocean region, have also given their support to the creation of a no-take marine protected area in the Chagos. These include the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Greenpeace UK, British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA), and Fauna and Flora International (FFI).
If the marine protection proposal is accepted, the Chagos Islands would provide an important global reference site for research in crucial areas such as ocean acidification, coral reef resilience, sea level rise, fish stock decline and climate change.
The waters around the Chagos Islands, out to their 200 mile nautical limit, contain the world’s largest coral atoll and many thriving species of corals and reef fish. At least 60 species listed on the IUCN’s Red List of Endangered Species live in these waters. The area also provides a safe haven for dwindling populations of sea turtles and hundreds of thousands of breeding sea birds, as well as an exceptional diversity of deep water habitats, such as trenches reaching nearly 20,000 feet (6,000 metres) in depth.
New research by the Zoological Society of London indicates that along with illegal fishing, legal fisheries have contributed to a substantial decline in reef sharks in the waters of the Chagos Islands. The analysis estimates that legal fisheries have led to a 90 percent drop in reef shark populations, and over 50 tonnes of open-ocean shark species are caught accidentally every year. Another recent study, commissioned by the Pew Environment Group, examined the economic value of the Chagos Islands and its surrounding waters and found that while small profits could be made from expanding fisheries in the area, the islands’ economic value is far greater as a unique and well-preserved haven in the Indian Ocean.
“A no-take marine reserve for the Chagos Archipelago would provide a safe refuge for tuna, billfish and sharks in the Indian Ocean. Its establishment would also significantly aid the recovery of the Indian Ocean’s drastically reduced fish populations, which would help enhance food security and promote sustainable livelihoods in the region,” said Professor Charles Sheppard, University of Warwick and BIOT Conservation Advisor. “Importantly, while the Archipelago remains largely uninhabited, a no-take reserve would provide much greater protection for these valuable resources than is currently afforded, and would undoubtedly prove to be of great benefit to any potential inhabitants of the Chagos, should they return sometime in the future.”
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The Chagos Environment Network (CEN) is a collaboration of leading conservation and scientific organisations seeking to protect the rich biodiversity of the Chagos Islands and its surrounding waters. This press release is supported by the following CEN members: The Chagos Conservation Trust, The Linnean Society of London, The Marine Conservation Society, the Pew Environment Group, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Zoological Society of London, and Professor Charles Sheppard of the University of Warwick. For more information, please visit: www.protectchagos.org.
Petition numbers have been collated from the Chagos Environment Network petition, Care2, and Avaaz.
Media Contact
Alistair Gammell, +44 (0)20 7960 6323/+44 (0)7976 514 043; info@protectchagos.org
Hi people
There is a lot of talk about protecting the Islands, but not much talk about the poeple that used to live there (and should be allowed to return there).
I also want to know if this means that the US base wants to remain there after 2016?? with its fossel fueled military hardware? that wont help the environment either -I am sure they have plenty of other places they can stay but — how much money are they dangling to the UK government this time?
For more information on the Chagossian people please see our People page here: http://protectchagos.org/about-chagos/people/
We don’t know whether the USA and the UK will renew their treaty to keep the military base following 2016. However, we do know from extensive surveys in the region that thus far the presence of the military base has not been significantly detrimental to the environment of the Chagos. The base is housed on Diego Garcia, an island in the very south of the archipelago and therefore many hundreds of miles away from much of the rest of the area. The environmental impacts from the base have been highly localised, and therefore have not affected the rest of the Chagos, which remains in pristine condition. Much of Diego Garcia itself has not been affected, and indeed a high proportion of the island not utilised by the base is already protected by conservation areas.
just some comments from a scuba diver…
It is an indescribably sad experience to observe huge coral reefs, that you know were healthy a few years ago, and now look like graveyards of coral rubble. This has also occurred in the Florida Keys, especially in the Elkhorn coral. I have photos of healthy remote Pacific island reefs in Fiji at http://EcoDelMar.org/fiji but you can also see evidence of stress in these remote reefs, nowhere near industry. I think global warming and global ocean acidification are as real and as serious as a heart attack… and to a great extent, comparable to an unstoppable tidal wave that will last at least hundreds of years after we have stopped burning fossil fuels. Industrial dumping of known highly toxic chemicals into waterways worldwide is causing an even more acute impairment to all marine live, from coral reef polyps all the way up to the great Orcas and is even linked to the explosion of autism and learning disabilities in young children. please see http://EcoDelMar.org/youth and http://EcoDelMar.org/pcb
ps: about military impact: The US Ohio River leads nation in toxic discharge…
A national environmental group has released a study indicating two area rivers are among the top 10 waterways for total toxic discharge… The bulk of the New River’s 14 million pounds of toxic discharge is largely the result of the U.S. Army Radford Army Ammunition plant in Radford, Va. The study claims the plant is responsible for more than 13.6 million pounds of toxic pollutants into the New River. Calls to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection office in Parkersburg were referred to Charleston. After several days of leaving messages, officials in Charleston referred questions to Melyssa Savage, Title III program manager for the West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. Savage was out of the office…
GE USA and the American Paper Industry Giants
Filed Lawsuit to block Standard Measures
previously established to protect the
American Public from toxic PCBs
General Electric Company and the American Forest and Paper Association (a trade group representing the paper industry), joined forces to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to block new PCB water quality criteria designed to protect human health.
The EPA settled with industrial giants and yet another corporate action accomplished it’s profitable goal:
Hazardous PCB rulings were delayed once again so that highly profitable American Industries were allowed to continue dumping known Toxic PCBs into American Public Waterways leading to the only living Oceans in the entire universe.
http://FoxRiverWatch.com/industry_sues_to_block_safety_standards
Insurance and public health costs are expected to skyrocket as the ocean’s food chain is contaminated, more children are diagnosed with ADD and autism, and more adults are diagnosed with cancer. Immune system suppression is expected to result in incurable infections, again severely impacting corporate insurance investments and dividends.
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http://EcoDelMar.org/Green_Military