17 Feb 2009 - Moscow,
Russia - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin has proposed outlawing fishing with
drift nets, otherwise known as “walls of
death”, following a lengthy campaign by
fishermen and politicians in Kamchatka as
well as local organizations including WWF-Russia.
Drift nets are used
to catch fish migrating in open sea. Each
net can be several kilometres long and their
use results in a large bycatch of sharks,
turtles, seabirds and marine mammals which
are usually thrown back dead into the ocean.
Large-scale ocean drift
netting was banned by the UN in international
waters in 2002 and near-shore drift netting
is carefully regulated in US and EU waters.
In the Russian Far East two kinds of ocean
drift net fishing exist: Japanese, in accordance
with the bilateral agreement with Russia,
and the so-called “scientific” drift netting.
Both are principally aimed at the highly
prized sockeye salmon and it is estimated
that 60,000 tons of other less valuable
salmon are discarded annually.
Over the past three
months WWF-Russia, together with the Kamchatka
coalition “Save the Salmon Together”, has
collected signatures in support of a ban
on drift net fishing. The coalition, supported
by WWF, unites local NGOs, fishermen and
representatives of the Kamchatka legislative
and executive authorities.
The Kamchatka coastal
fishermen, including indigenous people,
have been fighting for several years for
a ban on drift net fishing. Now, according
to the press service of the Kamchatka Parliament
(Duma), Prime Minister Putin has given orders
for documents to be prepared on the complete
ban of drift nets in Russian waters.
“We welcome this proposal
because we consider ocean drift netting
to be environmentally dangerous and there
are better ways of catching fish,” said
Konstantin Zgurovsky, Head of WWF-Russia
Marine Programme.
It is not for nothing
that drift nets are called walls of death.
Pacific salmon and marine mammals including
whales, dolphins, seabirds and even threatened
species such as the Short-tailed Albatross
get caught in the nets.
Another consequence
of drift net fishing is that the nets become
a barrier for fish on their way from the
ocean to the rivers to spawn, thus depriving
local fishermen of their potential catch.
“This month in Kamchatka
there will be a public hearing on the drift
net ban and there are some commercial interests
of people who want to continue using the
drift net, so the struggle is not over,”
said Zgurovsky.
+ More
Traditional leaders
to help WWF save threatened marine turtles
23 Feb 2009 - WWF will
convene a council of traditional leaders
in the Asia Pacific’s Coral Triangle to
help reverse the decline of globally threatened
marine turtles, an international symposium
on sea turtle biology and conservation held
in Brisbane, Australia heard this week.
The Coral Triangle spans
Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua
New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor
Leste and is home to six of the seven known
species of marine turtles, including green,
hawksbill, loggerhead, flatback, olive ridley,
and leatherback turtles.
The protection of critical
turtle nesting beaches and foraging grounds
in the Coral Triangle is compromised by
the remoteness of their locations, which
resulted in the plan to engage local community
leaders in a Turtle Guardian Council to
help protect the sites.
“The idea behind the
Turtle Guardian Council was to support more
effective management by traditional leaders
of critical turtle habitats, especially
in remote areas, where there is limited
formal government capacity and resources
to implement turtle conservation,” said
Dr Matheus Halim, Turtle Strategy Leader
for WWF’s Coral Triangle Programme.
“What we need to achieve
now is formal and legal government recognition
within this part of the world of the important
role traditional leaders play in protection
of sea turtles.”
The Indonesian Government
has developed a draft National Action Plan
that acknowledges the role of communities
in the protection of turtle nesting beaches.
The local communities in Jamursbamedi and
Warmon in Papua – two of the remaining leatherback
turtle nesting areas in the Western Pacific
– are good examples of community involvement
in surveillance and scientific work where
government intervention is very limited.
All of the Coral Triangle’s
turtle species are threatened with extinction
through over-exploitation for their meat,
consumption of their eggs, and through the
illegal trade in shells for ornamental purposes.
In addition to the threats marine turtles
face on land, hundreds of thousands of turtles
are killed each year as unwanted bycatch
in fishing gear such as longlines and nets.
As many as 200,000 loggerheads
and 50,000 leatherbacks are caught annually
by commercial long-line tuna, swordfish,
and similar fisheries all over the world.
Just in the Pacific, the leatherback turtle
population has dropped from 90,000 nesting
females in the 1980s to approximately 2,000
today.
“Turtle conservation
in the Coral Triangle has so far been tackled
by each country under their own national
laws. However, this backyard-oriented, fragmented
method has never been sufficient in dealing
with issues of a transboundary nature,”
said Dr Halim.
“Because turtles belong
to no particular country, protecting them
requires a more cohesive and integrated
approach.”
The strong biological
ties between Indonesia and the reefs on
the west Australian coast have recently
been demonstrated with the tagging of green
turtles in Indonesia and the monitoring
of their progress to the Kimberley-Pilbara
coast in west Australia.
In February and November
last year, Dorte and Ana, two female green
turtles, were tagged in Indonesia as part
of a turtle tracking project by WWF and
Udayana University in Bali. Their progress
was monitored as they slowly made their
way from nesting beaches in East Java, across
the Indian Ocean, to the beaches of the
Kimberley in Western Australia.
A transboundary turtle
conservation initiative has been established
between Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and
the Solomon Islands, three countries with
a shared interest in Western Pacific leatherback
turtle conservation. An agreement to share
the responsibilities of protecting the migratory
path of the Western Pacific leatherback
has lead the three countries to establish
network of marine protected areas.
“Remarkably, despite
the range of threats these species face,
many populations of marine turtles in the
region can recover with adequate intervention,”
Dr Halim said.
“The tracking of turtles
such as Ana and Dorte have shown us areas
where we need to focus our efforts, and
is helping us understand, for example, how
we could design networks of marine protected
areas that conserve the full range of plant
and animal life, and ensure their survival
for years to come.”
Charlie Stevens, Media
Manager, WWF Coral Triangle Programme
Dr Matheus Halim, Turtle Strategy Leader,
WWF Coral Triangle Programme
