Recent revisions of Australia’s National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (NRSMPA) have further biased protection of biodiversity away from commercially useful waters, thereby forgoing another opportunity for large-scale marine conservation.
The NRSMPA includes State, Territory, and Commonwealth MPAs, with the latter component undergoing significant revisions from 2012, to 2015 and 2018 (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Australia’s 2018 National Representative System of MPAs, showing broad zones based on International Union for Conservation of Nature categories.
In our recently published paper in Biological Conservation (Cockerell et al. 2020), we assessed how these revisions affected the capacity of the NRSMPA to protect biophysical features and areas potentially threatened by extractive uses. We measured the spatial overlap between broad zones (IUCN: I- II, IV, and VI) of the NRSMPA iterations (2012, 2015, and 2018) and provincial bioregions, key ecological features, depth classes, Commonwealth pelagic longlining, Commonwealth trawling, and offshore petroleum extraction. Further, we presented preceding fish catch inside and outside of broad zone types, and showed forgone Commonwealth fisheries catch and value by each NRSMPA iteration.
We found that protection levels in the NRSMPA were downgraded in 2018, compared to 2012 and 2015 iterations (Figure 2). Each iteration met its qualitative goals, but the lack of explicit, quantitative goal-framing (long considered essential for conservation planning) meant that representation of biophysical features was highly uneven and dominated by MPAs offering little protection against the impacts of extractive uses.
Figure 2. Percentages of the 2012, 2015 and 2018 iterations of the NRSMPA covered by the three broad zones. Zones I-II indicate strict protection from all extractive activities. Coloured flows between iterations indicate exchanges of areas between broad zones.
Areas with value for pelagic longlining, demersal trawling, and offshore petroleum extraction were largely avoided by MPAs, irrespective of their biophysical features. The 2012 Coral Sea Marine Reserve illustrated this pattern strongly by protecting a relatively high percentage of biophysical features while still failing to protect marine biodiversity against pelagic longlining in green zones (Figure 3). Among iterations, very little Commonwealth fisheries catch and value was forgone, indicating that few safeguards were established for species threatened by fishing.
Figure 3. Overlap of Commonwealth pelagic longlining effort hours (2011–2014) with broad zones in the Coral Sea Marine Park and Temperate East planning region of the proclaimed 2012 NRSMPA.
Cockerell, B., R. L. Pressey, A. Grech, J. G. Álvarez-Romero, T. Ward, R. Devillers. 2020. Representation does not necessarily reduce threats to biodiversity: Australia’s Commonwealth marine protected area system, 2012–2018. Biological Conservation, 252: 108813
