Our Ocean, a statewide coalition of Oregon conservationists, scientists, ocean users, local and business leaders, applauded Governor John Kitzhaber for signing landmark conservation legislation that designates three marine reserves and protected areas off Cape Falcon, Cascade Head, and Cape Perpetua, creating Oregon’s first system of marine reserves.

Combined with new sites that were implemented in January 2012 at Redfish Rocks near Port Orford and Otter Rock by Depoe Bay, the law creates an initial network of marine reserves and protected areas off the Oregon coast.  The reserves will serve as “ecological savings accounts” and provide places for plants and animals to reproduce and thrive.

“The sum total of all no-take areas in Oregon’s ocean will represent just roughly 3 percent of our state’s 362-mile coastline now,”  said Paul Engelmeyer fo the Audubon Society of Portland.  “Yet combined with neighboring habitats, these designations have the potential to bolster marine health and, by extension, our ability to harvest offshore resources more sustainably.  We believe this legislation has potential to create a coastal legacy that our children will enjoy for many generations.”

Marine reserves around the world have demonstrated the value that protecting these habitats can have for creating strong local economies and coastal ecosystems.

Yasuni National Park in Ecuadorian Amazonia is one of the most biodiverse places on earth, more plant species in its million hectares of swamps, jungle and marshes that the whole of North America combined.  The Pygmy Marmoset — the world’s smallest monkey — sloths and giant otters are among the threatened species in the park.

Yasuni is also home to an estimated 200 members of one of the last nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes on Earth.  The Huaorani fiercely value their independence and have chosen to live in isolation.

Beneath this ecological wonder lies a threat that could destroy it forever, an estimated 846 million barrels of crude oil, in three immense fields, known collectively as ITT.  Faced with an extraordinary dilemma the Ecuadoreans have come up with a novel response.  By creating the Yasuni ITT Trust Fund, they are asking the world to pay to save the forest with the understanding that if US$3.5 billion can be raised over a ten-year period (about half the total estimated value of the crude in the ground when the idea was launched), then Yasuni will be spared.  Administered by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with board members from major donating countries and organisations, the fund was first launched in 2007 at the United Nations General Assembly, where it met with a standing ovation.  www.yasuni-itt.gob.ec

In 2004,, under the auspices of University College, London, Open Street Map (OSM) was lauched with the lofty ambition of creating a world map that anyone could use and to which anyone could contribute.

A network  of volunteers and enthusiasts works on the map to ensure that it remains dynamic and up to date.  Growth is organic, unplanned and imperfect.  Some areas are mapped in immense detail, others remain completely blank in spite of richness of culture and life on the ground.  This uneveness follows the contours of prosperity and, as such much of the developing world is represented simply as empty space.  Although projects are underway in some areas to begin to mitigate this situation.  www.openstreetmap.org

Recent efforts to resolve an impasse at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) have come up very short.  The proposed compromise released recently by the IWC fails to respect both the 1994 declaration of the Southern Whale Sanctuary as well as their 28-year old moratorium on commercial whaling.

The Southern Ocean, the environmentally sensitive waters around Antarctica, must be respected as off-limits to any whaling today as well as 10 years from now.  It is extremely disappointing that this proposed compromise validates Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean.

Many thousands of whales are no longer killed each year because of the moratorium, one of the major victories of the environmental movement and conservation-minded governments.  However commercial whaling continues by Japan, Iceland and Norway under the guise of science or in disregard for the moratorium, and will continue with the proposed compromise.

There are numerous threats to whales today, ranging from pollution, ship strikes, bycatch in fishing gear, underwater noise, to industrial fishing and climate change and these are greater than they have ever been in the past.  For two years the member countries of the IWC have been negotiating to find a way forward, to solve the whaling problem and address the many threats to whales across the world’s oceans.  The result of these negotiations released recently do not go anywhere near far enough to achieve those goals.

The European Commission failed to reach an unqualified decision on the proposal to prohibit international trade of Atlantic bluefin tuna at the upcoming meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

Monaco proposed a CITES Appendix I listing for the Atlantic bluefin tuna because the species is in dire straits.  This is a direct result of poor fisheries management by the treaty organisation responsible for managing the bluefin fishery, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), as well as overfishing and illegal fishing, particularly in the Mediterranean.

In 1992, the last time the bluefin was discussed at CITES, the proposal was withdrawn in favour of ICCAT taking action.  But pressure from the fishing industry undercut ICCAT’s ability to reduce the bluefin catch limit for more than a year.  Only a CITES Appendix I listing can save the fish – and the fishery.  In fact, ICCAT’s standing committee on research and statistics and UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) acknowledge that the bluefin stocks have been depleted to the point where the species qualifies.

All fisheries must be managed with the best scientific advice.  Short-term economic and political concerns must not be allowed to trump science or the long-term survival of the fish.  The Atlantic bluefin tuna is a clear case study of overfishing that must be stopped and should not be repeated.  It is a clear case of needing the protections of CITES Appendix I – a suspension of international commercial trade.