Title
Wilderness and conservation policies needed to avoid a coral reef fisheries crisis
Author(s)
McClanahan, Timothy Rice
Published
2020
Publisher
Marine Policy
Abstract
Conservation and management policies rely on the perceived status of marine ecosystems, which are influenced by proxies and estimation methods. These include the number of protected areas, the percent coverage of nearshore areas, frequency or area relative to other ecosystems, and a diverse set of possible but often poorly evaluated impacts. Based on the emerging studies of the geographic distribution of reef fish biomass, I used two metrics of travel time to human settlements (>4-h) and major markets (>9-h) to estimate the percentage of passive conservation as remote wilderness in 99 tropical ecoregions. Randomly selecting >25,000 tropical coral reefs from a current coral reef map, 2.5% of the random reefs were classified as active conservation or high compliance marine reserves. Passive conservation was considerably larger at ~12% using the >4-h and 48% by the >9-h travel time thresholds. Marine reserves were more frequently located >4-h than <4-h travel times, indicating their inadequate usage as fisheries management tools. Therefore, travel distance or passive conservation and possibly fishing restrictions are the main mechanisms protecting coral reefs. Evaluating the distribution of an active plus passive conservation threshold of 30% protection indicated that 35% of the ecoregions did not achieve this level while 15% had a 100% deficit. When human dependency on fisheries was evaluated, most of Africa, Asia, and Caribbean ecoregions lacked significant refuge and therefore vulnerable to fisheries collapses. Estimates of passive plus active conservation deficits provides a path to prioritize actions to increase active conservation and restricting human and market demands.
Keywords
fisheries markets;conservation planning;marine reserves;pristine ecosystems;protected area targets;trade;UN accords
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PUB25183