Govt Vows No Marine Parks

[Gary Fooks]

Article from: Mercury (Hobart)</IMG>

SUE NEALES
April 19, 2008 12:00am
THERE'S a letter burning a hole in a lot of kitchen benches and coffee tables around Tasmania at the moment that should be the topic of even wider community debate.
Sent by Primary Industries and Water Minister David Llewellyn on March 19 to the 22,000 Tasmanians who hold annual fishing licences, it reassures all occasional, weekend and holiday fishers that their pastime can continue uninterrupted and unimpeded.
That is, regardless of the long-term sustainability and effect of their fishing on any fish species or any favourite fishing spot, the letter promises fishers that the State Government will not create around Tasmania any new marine park where recreational fishing is banned.
More specifically, in both Mr Llewellyn's letter and various other public statements, the Lennon Government has pledged never to agree to the latest recommendations of Tasmania's main planning body, the Resource Planning and Development Commission, to establish 14 new marine reserves in the southeast.
Effectively it has pre-empted the outcome of any final deliberations about how best to preserve the unique marine ecosystems of the Bruny bioregion, which encompasses the area south of Maria Island to the Tasman Peninsula and Bruny Island, including the D'Entrecasteaux Channel and Huon River and Derwent estuaries.
Yet it was the RPDC that was given the job by the State Government in the first place of recommending appropriate marine parks (rather like national parks on land) under its own marine protection strategy.
It took two years for the RPDC to canvass views from all sides of the debate, including from the fishing lobby, local communities and multiple marine scientists. Late in 2007, in its draft report, the RPDC initially proposed the creation of 45 new marine reserves around the Bruny bioregion, covering an area of 38,407 hectares of coastal reefs and offshore rocks and bays.
But those ideas met with great community and Government resistance, especially from recreational fishers. By the release of its final report to Government in early March, the RPDC had slashed the number of recommended Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) from 45 to just 14, and their total area by 69 per cent to just 12,072ha.
The final list of 14 still includes no-take zones around the popular fishing spots of Hippolyte Rocks and Fortescue Bay on the Tasman Peninsula, the focus of much of the original controversy, though of greatly diminished size and scale.
Of the 14 reserves, the RPDC wants eight to be no-take zones where no fishing is allowed. In the other six reserve zones, fishing take would be restricted.
The executive commissioner of the RPDC, Simon Cooper, could hardly have made his exasperation plainer to the Government in his final report recommending the smaller reserves.
"The resulting 14 recommended areas (create) as lean a system (of MPAs) as the Commission could determine whilst still complying with the terms of reference and the (Government's own) Tasmanian Marine Protected Areas Strategy," the final RPDC report pointedly states.
It says that while the RPDC had adjusted the boundaries and levels of protection for each area after initial criticism to "minimise social and economic impact", any further weakening of the level of protection would compromise the entire purpose of the marine reserve system.
"If any of these (14) areas are not declared, then the Strategy's primary goal to establish a comprehensive and representative system (of protected marine parks) will not be met."
Reading between the not-very-subtle lines of the final RPDC report, Mr Cooper is warning that any reluctance or refusal by the State Government to create these 14 recommended marine parks will compromise, or even abrogate, Tasmania's obligations under national and international agreements.
The Federal Government and all state governments, including Tasmania, agreed a decade ago to set up a national network of marine parks around Australia's coastline and offshore rock shelf stretching from the Great Barrier Reef to the far south of Tasmania.
In turn, Australia is signatory to similar international agreements protecting marine biodiversity through the United Nations, including the endorsement of a global target to protect 10per cent of all marine areas by the year 2012.
Yet the final, apparently threatening recommendations of the RPDC for the Bruny bioregion come nowhere near that aim. The 14 marine areas the RPDC wants protected include less than 3 per cent of the specified southeast region's coastline and 1 per cent of its entire marine environment.
By way of contrast, Victoria has 5 per cent of its coastline already protected in no-take marine parks where all fishing and catch-diving are banned. More are on the drawing board.
In New South Wales, 6 per cent of the coastline is protected from fishing, while a very substantial 30per cent of the Great Barrier Reef is now covered by the famous "green" or no-catch zones.
(Interestingly, while Queensland recreational fishers were vociferously opposed to no-take zones being declared along the Great Barrier Reef in 2003, they are now largely supportive after big increases in the size and abundance of fish caught adjacent to but outside the protected "green" zone boundaries.)
It was for all those reasons that in 2001 the Tasmanian Labor Government (the same one as today) adopted the Tasmanian Marine Protected Areas Strategy, a policy framework prepared with the backing of the Marine Industries Council. Its primary goal is not about fish abundance, fish stocks or fish biodiversity alone.
It is "to establish and manage a comprehensive, adequate and representative system of marine protected areas, to contribute to the long-term ecological viability of marine and estuarine systems, to maintain ecological processes and to protect Tasmania's biological diversity".
None of those objectives, or the ecological significance of the marine region itself, will go any way to being recognised if the Government fails to endorse, and enforce, the RPDC's hardly ambitious final proposals for the Bruny bioregion.
Yet this southeastern corner of Tasmania is regarded internationally as home to one of the planet's most remarkable marine environments.
It marks the convergence of the icy, nutrient-rich seas of the Southern Ocean and Antarctic with the warm East Australian Current that flows down the east coast. In its mix are also the dark tannin waters of the Huon estuary, the sheltered waters of the D'Entrecasteaux Channel and the wild corner cliffs between Tasman Island and Storm Bay.
Its unique inhabitants include six species of ancient handfish, three types of sea star and a range of red seaweeds found only at the mouth of the Derwent, as well as its famous kelp forests and countless magnificent dive spots with unlimited tourist potential. But in the face of an onslaught of political pressure from the powerful fishing lobby, the State Government has already spectacularly caved in.
"The Government's position is that it will not agree to recommendations that would adversely affect fishers," Mr Llewellyn's letter to fish licence holders said.
"The Government believes that management of fish stocks is very well administered; it will not be agreeing to any recommendations that restrict or prevent traditional fishing activities of recreational or commercial fishers."
In other cultures and jurisdictions, the dispatch of such a letter would be seen as evidence of dissension or revolt within the Government's own ranks. For it clearly runs totally counter to the thrust of national agreements signed earlier by the Labor Government, and to commitments Environment Minister Michelle O'Byrne has a duty to oversee and ensure that Tasmania meets.
Why, one could legitimately ask, is the Primary Industries Minister interfering at all, when the Bruny bioregion debate is not about commercial fishing -- it is unaffected by the recommended marine parks -- but about vital environmental issues? But here in Tasmania, rather like the gun-toting right-to-own arms cry in the US, Mr Llewellyn's missive is seen simply as endorsing and affirming the inalienable right of all Tasmanians to fish when and where they want.
It seems a community debate that has descended into being more about politics and votes than sound environmental discussion and marine biodiversity protection.
Don't forget too that Mr Llewellyn is a local Labor member for Lyons, which covers the Tasman Peninsula where most of the passion from recreational fishers about the proposed marine parks has concentrated.
And, as Government strategists well know, surveys show one-third of all Tasmanians like to dangle a line at some time during the year. Yet if the Great Barrier Reef experience is anything to go by, recreational fishers and the tourism industry have nothing to lose, and a lot to gain, by a proper network of marine parks being established as quickly as possible around Tasmania.

[SASSYJNR]

Are You The Gary Fooks Related To The Shane Fooks , The Old Boxers From Daisy Hill??

[Gary Fooks]

This Minister is going to cop a lot of flack from the vegans - especially in Tasmania!

Will you guys send a letter of support? a letter on paper is worth 50 emails so please buy a stamp and send it the old fashioned way.

I will send one tonight? who else will?

Gary

David Llewellyn
Level 1, Public Buildings,
Franklin Square,
HOBART
7000
Ph: 6233 6454
Fax: 6233 2272
David.Llewellyn@dpiw.tas.gov.au

[Chris Ryan]

Count me in Gary.

[billfisher]

I don't know where that Sue Neals gets her information. The GBR marine park has been a socio-economic disaster for practically no environmental benfift. There is cetainly no evidence of anglers benifiting from a 'spillover effect'.

[Chris Ryan]

My letter has gone - pointing out the foibles from Sue Neals.

Chris