By Dr Floor Anthoni,
director of Seafriends Marine Conservation and Education Centre
in Leigh.
30 January 2001
Marine reserves of New Zealand have hit the news recently
since the public is being reminded that submissions on a review
document for the Marine Reserves Act closes on February 19th.
Just as an over-arching Oceans Policy is in the pipeline,
the timing of this event can rightly be questioned, particularly
since many of our marine reserves are not working - let me
explain.
Conservationists are quick to complain that less than 1%
of our coastline is being protected, despite the 17 marine
reserves now existing or under proposal. By comparison, some
30% of the land is protected. New Zealand prides itself of
being a green and clean country, taking credit for our extensive
national parks. However, most of our conservation estate is
either too steep, too inaccessible or too cold for exploitation.
They are our useless lands, having been preserved by accident.
By comparison, our coasts are accessible and productive everywhere,
and conserving these requires considerably more effort and
foresight. But there is another important difference.
Our national parks, resting above civilisation, are spared
human influence, except for the damaging effects of introduced
deer and other species. Sewage simply does not flow uphill
to soil Mount Cook. But everything we do on the land flows
into the sea, the sump of civilisation. Here it kills marine
life, reducing the biological diversity of our coasts while
also affecting our inshore fisheries and marine farming. It
has turned our pristine coasts into the equivalent of badlands.
Recent bio toxin scares are but a small warning of what is
happening down there.
Whereas our national parks are the most pristine, and thus
worth saving, we would not consider giving our eroding badlands
of bare soil, gorse and foxglove similar status. Yet in the
sea, this is precisely what we have been doing for 25 years.
12 out of 17 marine reserves are in serious decline. Do we
really want to continue along this path? Do we really want
to measure the success of marine conservation by the numbers
of marine reserves and their visitors? Do we really want to
risk the public's contempt and lose their support? Already
since 1995 I have been fighting for improving marine reserves,
but apparently to no avail.
Why? Let me give an example. In the winter of 1998, a large
mud storm (but not much larger than previous years') chased
out 80% of the crayfish in New Zealand's first marine reserve
at Goat Island. They were successively caught and never wandered
back into the reserve. Two years later, scientists confirmed
my observations, but the public is not supposed to know. Rather
than learning from this fact, it is being hushed up. Why?
Why are we presented with flawed information from scientists?
Let me give another example.
To prove that marine reserves are working, scientists measure
the abundance of commercial species like snapper, blue cod
and crayfish. They are paid by the Ministry of Fisheries or
the Department of Conservation, hence their interest in only
these three species. As can be expected, these fish increase
in numbers as soon as fishing is discontinued - instant proof
of the success of marine conservation. But these three species
are rather mobile. They can easily move away from the mud
clouds that cling to the shore and do their disastrous work.
However, many of the thousands of other species making up
the bulk of the coast's biological diversity, are not as fortunate.
They are the real residents, often cemented to the rocks for
life: the plants, sponges, seasquirts, anemones, corals and
many more. Their health, presence or absence tells the real
story of the health of their coastal environment. Yet scientists
do not monitor these and have not done so for the past 25
years of marine conservation in NZ. Hence nobody knows that
over 60% of our marine reserves are in serious decay. From
year to year they are going from bad to worse. Why does nobody
notice? It is fair to say that the vast majority, perhaps
over 99% of the supporters and creators of marine reserve
policy are armchair conservationists lacking hands-on experience
from frequent diving over a long enough period to be able
to notice changes. How many people would be able to 'read'
the health of an environment from the animals and plants that
have survived? Very few indeed. So the voices of those who
know are drowned by those who don't want to hear, a recipe
for bad policy and feel-good decisions. And then there are
the myths and commercial interests. To publish the ecological
disasters of our country would tarnish the 'green and clean'
myth and to publish that a marine reserve like that in Milford
Sound is under serious stress, would affect commercial operators
there. So we won't talk about these things, and the public
is left in the dark. Instead we are talking about replicates
and systems of reserves and networks of these.
Now we are keen to legislate 10% of our coastline into marine
reserve before the year 2010, which requires 15 times the
number of reserves we already have, or 20 every year. And
who will be jailed when we fail to reach this ambitious goal?
The legacy of a century of bad farming will still be with
us for another century, so why hurry? Why do we want to put
ambulances at the bottom of the cliff without attacking the
real threats to our coasts at the top? Obviously, it is time
to take a break and to think it over.
Read more about soil erosion and sustainability at www.seafriends.org.nz
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