![]() ![]() ![]() Today, around our coasts, 38% of UK waters are covered by a network of inshore and offshore Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) including Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) and other areas covering 885km2 of UK waters. Credit: Alamy Stock PhotoĪt that point, some 127 sites around the UK were identified. In 2009, the Marine and Coastal Access Act was passed, committing the government to setting up a network of areas to protect and conserve marine species and habitats around the UK.Ī three-year consultation process involved over a million people gathering information and providing opinion, and representations from stakeholders including the energy, fishing and leisure industries.ĭorset’s Studland Bay has become a testing ground for pragmatic management of conflicting interests. It was a mish-mash, and experts could see that some areas needed marine protections for threatened species such as otters, whales, dolphins and basking sharks, and for dwindling seabed organisms. Initially, marine areas fitted in a complex hierarchy of statutory protections, such as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Nature Conservation Marine Protected Areas (NCMPAs). ‘When I came back from New Zealand I thought, “We need these areas in the UK.” Yet we still haven’t got a proper no-take statutory marine reserve in the UK like the one I experienced at Cape Rodney-Okakari in New Zealand.’ A network of protection She had witnessed, first-hand, how marine life thrived in protected waters. Yet many of these were not – and are still not – managed in any active way.įiona Crouch returned to the UK full of enthusiasm for strictly protected marine areas. Credit: Alamy Stock Photoīy the 1990s virtually every coastal country had one or more marine reserves. ![]() New Zealand’s Cape Rodney-Okakri was the world’s first marine protected area. ![]()
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