[Coral-List] The Chagos MPA - what went wrong?
Richard Dunne
RichardPDunne at aol.com
Fri Sep 26 02:34:36 EDT 2014
*The Chagos Marine Protected Area - what went wrong?*_
Politics__and the Official Advice_
A piece by Fred Pearce in today's New Scientist: '/Chagos marine reserve
polluted by politics/'
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329884.400-chagos-marine-reserve-polluted-by-politics.htm#.VCT9I_ldV16)
gives an interesting account of what FCO officials were thinking and
advising at the time of the public consultation and creation of the
Chagos MPA, based on confidential internal memoranda.
_Good & Bad science_
New Scientist also refers to a paper 'in press' in Advances in Marine
Biology entitled '/The creation of the Chagos Marine Protected Area: a
fisheries perspective/' which is an exhaustive overview of the fisheries
of the Chagos. It demonstrates, amongst other things, that whilst expert
advice provided by fisheries advisers, MRAG, in private to the British
Indian Ocean Territory Administration was sound, scientific 'evidence'
from the Chagos Environment Network (CEN) alliance (Pew/Chagos
Conservation Trust/Zoological Society of London) was poorly researched
and grossly overstated any negative impact of the commercial tuna
fishery in the Chagos. Bad science, intense advocacy and alarmist claims
by the CEN, and a rushed public consultation led to a MPA which is
unlikely to confer any benefit on Indian Ocean tuna or their
conservation, and no significant additional protection for sharks,
marine turtles, or cetaceans. For further details see:
https://sites.google.com/site/thechagosarchipelago2/chagos-science/advances-in-marine-biology-2014
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Richard P Dunne
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