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  PlanetSave 28 Mar 06
Pacific island nations expected to announce creation of marine protected areas
Written by Michael Astor

BBC 29 Mar 06
Pacific isles get wildlife drive
By Tim Hirsch

Planet Ark 29 Mar 06
Island Nation Creates Third Largest Marine Park

-CURITIBA, Brazil - A tiny island nation in the Pacific Ocean has created the world's third-largest marine reserve, as global efforts to preserve biodiversity widen to include everything from insects to fish to forests.

President Anote Tong of the Republic of Kiribati announced the formation of the park on Tuesday at the 8th United Nations conference on the Convention on Biological Diversity under way this week in Brazil.

The Phoenix Islands Protected Area bans commercial fishing to protect more than 120 species of coral and 520 species of fish inside its 184,700 sq km (73,800 sq miles). It is the world's first marine park with deep-sea habitat, including underwater mountains.

Bigger reserves are located in Australia and Hawaii.

"If the coral and reefs are protected, then the fish will grow and bring us benefit," the president said. "In this way all species of fish can be protected so none become depleted or extinct."

Kiribati is located in the central Pacific between Hawaii and Fiji. It is the largest atoll nation in the world, with 33 islands stretching across several hundred miles.

The New England Aquarium in the United States and Conservation International, a non-governmental organization, are helping the tiny country set up the reserve. The two organizations will help set up an endowment that pays for the park's management costs and compensates the government for revenue lost from granting fewer commercial fishing licenses.

Subsistence fishing will be allowed in the park for local residents.

"This is a major milestone for marine conservation efforts in the Pacific and for island biodiversity," said Russell A. Mittermeier, president of Conservation International.

PlanetSave 28 Mar 06
Pacific island nations expected to announce creation of marine protected areas
Written by Michael Astor

CURITIBA, Brazil (AP) _ Representatives from Pacific island nations were expected to announce the creation of protected marine areas covering as much as 5 percent of the Pacific Ocean at a U.N-sponsored environmental conference in Brazil on Tuesday.

The anticipated marine reserves to be established by Palau, Kiribati, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands would cover 2.6 million square miles (6.7 million square kilometers) of ocean, said Joel Miles of Palau's Environmental Response office.

Miles said the region was home to 66 species threatened with extinction and 58 percent of the world's known coral species. Kiribati was expected to announce a preserve spanning 58,000 square miles (150,000 square kilometers)--an area roughly the size of Florida--in the region of the Phoenix Islands, an equatorial archipelago between Fiji and Hawaii.

Environmentalists said the move represented a growing recognition that islands and oceans merit greater protection in the face of deep-sea trawling, pollution and global warming. "This trend toward creating large marine management areas is increasing," Roger McManus of Conservation International said by telephone from Washington D.C. "What the Phoenix islands are proposing follows on the good example of Australia's great barrier reefs," said McManus, who is senior director of the group's global marine program.

Delegates at the eighth biannual Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biodiversity in Curitiba, 650 kilometers (400 miles) southwest of Rio de Janeiro, were expected to approve a measure creating a work group to better protect the world's islands at the final full session on Friday.

Delegates were also debating a moratorium on deep-sea trawling until management areas can be established in international waters. Deep-sea trawling is blamed for depleting the world's fish stocks, threatening many species with extinction and radically altering undersea habitats. While 12 percent of the Earth's land surface enjoys some form of environmental protection, the same is true for only 0.5 percent of the world's oceans.

McManus said that is because most of the ocean's waters lie outside the 200 miles (320 kilometers) off countries' coastlines that are sovereign territory.

"Early in history there was a discussion of how to divide up the oceans, and the idea that prevailed was that everyone would have rights of passage," he said. "In some sense that's been misinterpreted as rights of use and abuse."

Last week environmental group Greenpeace presented delegates with maps showing which areas of the high seas most warranted protection. "At prior meetings governments agreed to protect 40 percent of the world's oceans by 2010, and so far they've done nothing," said Marcelo Furtado of Greenpeace. "We're presenting them with a concrete plan. If you want to do this, this is how it could be done."

BBC 29 Mar 06
Pacific isles get wildlife drive
By Tim Hirsch BBC News Environment Correspondent in Curitiba, Brazil

A major initiative has been launched to conserve the fragile wildlife of the islands of the Pacific. It includes a commitment to protect nearly a third of coastal waters and a fifth of the land area of Micronesia. The announcement was made on the fringes of a UN conference on the protection of the world's biodiversity.

Scientists have warned that the variety of life on Earth is declining at a rate unprecedented since the demise of the dinosaurs.

In a separate move, one of the world's largest marine parks will be created in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati to protect an extraordinary untouched coral ecosystem.

Island extinctions

Islands contain a disproportionate number of the world's species, as their isolation over millions of years has resulted in separate evolutionary pathways. For example, the exotic white-crested Kagu (Rhynochetos jubatus) is the sole member of an entire bird family, and lives only on the island of New Caledonia. Some 16% of the world's known plant species have evolved on islands and their coastal waters contain half of the planet's variety of marine life.

This isolation makes the wildlife uniquely vulnerable to extinction as environmental changes in just a small area can easily wipe out entire species. Half of all known extinctions have involved island species, including the notorious case of the dodo on Mauritius.

Current threats include deforestation, over-fishing and the degradation of coral reefs, 30% of which are already severely damaged.

Future of fishing

The initiative to increase protection of Pacific islands was launched by the president of the tiny nation of Palau, an island group with a human population of barely 20,000. Its aim is to provide effective protection by 2020 of 30% of the inshore marine life of the ocean region of Micronesia, and of 20% of land ecosystems.

At the launch of the programme in the Brazilian city of Curitiba, a total of $18m was pledged towards conservation in Micronesia, coming from a combination of government funds, conservation organisations and international finance institutions.

The new marine protected area in Kiribati will cover an area twice the size of Portugal, and will heavily restrict human activities in the Phoenix Islands, a group of eight coral atolls between Hawaii and Fiji. They are nearly uninhabited, and have stunned conservation scientists with an extraordinary variety of unique wildlife including 120 species of coral and more than 500 fish, some new to science. In addition, it is an important stopping point for migrating birds and sea turtles.

While the Phoenix Islands are still in a remarkably pristine condition, the creation of the new protected area is designed to prevent future damage from over-fishing and to offset the impact of climate change.

This will involve setting up an endowment fund to compensate the government of Kiribati for revenue it could have got from the issuing of commercial fishing licences, and also to finance professional management of the wildlife. It is hoped that by protecting coral ecosystems, the long-term future for small-scale fishing can be secured for people in the region, as the reefs provide important spawning grounds.

'Major milestone'

The island initiative is being contrasted with the slow pace of global efforts to address the crisis of biodiversity loss, with the government negotiations at this UN convention getting bogged down in arguments over finance and the rules for sharing profits from products such as drugs obtained through traditional knowledge of plants.

There has been concern from conservation organisations that while a growing proportion of land-based ecosystems are at least officially protected, the process of designating ocean areas for conservation has barely begun.

Russ Mittermeier, of the group Conservation International, which is helping to sponsor the Phoenix Islands protection scheme, said: "This is a major milestone for marine conservation efforts in the Pacific and for island biodiversity." "The Republic of Kiribati has shown unprecedented vision for long-term conservation of its precious marine biodiversity."
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