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Criticisms of science, social impacts, opinion leaders, and targets for no‐take zones led to cuts in New South Wales' (Australia) system of marine protected areas
Author(s) -
Gladstone William
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
aquatic conservation: marine and freshwater ecosystems
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.95
H-Index - 77
eISSN - 1099-0755
pISSN - 1052-7613
DOI - 10.1002/aqc.2469
Subject(s) - citation , library science , sociology , computer science
On 12 March 2013 the state Government of New South Wales (NSW), Australia, announced a new approach to managing its marine environment (including calling it the ‘marine estate’). This included announcing an amnesty on recreational shore-based fishing in all ocean beach and headland sanctuary zones (i.e. no-take) in its State-wide system of large multiple-use marine protected areas (MPAs), called marine parks, and a moratorium on declaring more marine parks (NSW Government, 2013a). The NSW Government Ministers responsible for marine parks stated “...decisions around the management of the NSW marine estate will now be based on science and in the long term interest of community, marine ecosystems and industry. The NSW Government is delivering on its election commitment for a common sense marine parks policy...After years of political interference and decisions based on poor or incomplete science...the credibility of Marine Parks and our fishing industries has been undermined” (NSW Government, 2013a) and "There is little or no scientific basis for preventing line fishing from land...We are immediately giving an amnesty to that" (The Coffs Coast Advocate, 2013). Despite the relatively minor change in total area of no-take zones in NSW’s marine parks this decision attracted the most attention from conservation groups, recreational fishing groups and scientists. However, the changes announced also included a potentially farreaching shift in policy approach to biodiversity conservation away from the nationally agreed precautionary use of a representative network of MPAs to a risk-based framework.