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The Irish Wildlife Trust (IWT) welcomes the latest announcement of a large new Special Protection Area (SPA) in the north-west Irish Sea. SPAs are designated under existing legislation for the protection of birds and are a form of Marine Protected Area (MPA). The announcement brings the coverage of our marine environment falling within designated areas for nature to nearly 10%.
The new designation, along with other recent announcements are vitally important in ensuring that future developments do not result in harm to these sensitive places. However, in nearly all instances, harmful activities, particularly from fishing, are already underway. If MPAs are to be effective, they must control the fishing.
The IWT is therefore calling on the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, to accelerate the process of carrying out fisheries assessments in existing MPAs in line with goals to protect and restore biodiversity.
In particular, this means removing particularly harmful activities such as dredging, bottom trawling or mid-water trawling from these areas. Earlier this year, the European Commission called for the removal of bottom-towed fishing gear from all MPAs and asked that member states, including Ireland, produce a plan for the ending of these practices in existing MPAs by next March.
IWT campaign officer Pádraic Fogarty says “creating new MPAs is a critical step in the protection of our seas. They are the foundations for long-term management, but without the management and especially the removal of particularly harmful fishing practices, the designations are meaningless.”
The IWT also wants to highlight the fact that many areas with sensitive habitats and species, such as the Kish Bank off the coast of Dublin and Wicklow, remain without any protections. Promised legislation for the creation of MPAs in Irish law (beyond the relatively limited scope of existing legislation) has yet to appear. Therefore, despite the welcome expansion of MPAs we are still trailing far behind in the stated aim of protecting 30% of our seas by 2030