Marine Conservation Zones - a proposed designation tool for the Marine Bill
In the draft Marine Bill we propose a new type of marine protected area. These will be known as Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs), and they will allow the protection of nationally important habitats and species. These will replace MNRs under the 1981 Act.
Varying levels of protection will be given to individual sites, from restricting certain activities, to ‘Highly Protected Marine Reserves’, where no damaging activities will be allowed.
The network of MCZs will help to halt the decline in biodiversity by including the full range of UK habitats and species and conserving areas where there are rare and threatened species and habitats. It will provide areas of good quality habitat which help to ensure that the marine environment is healthy and able to deliver the many goods and services we rely on.
We wish to ensure that communities support the marine protected area network, and that socio-economic activities are taken in to account in designing the network. Work has already begun in south-west England through a regional partnership project called “Finding Sanctuary”. This is a stakeholder-led project aiming to produce network proposals for south-west waters, which are ‘owned’ and supported by regional stakeholders. The Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and Natural England will be helping the partnership to design a network which provides sites of sufficient size and spacing for healthy marine ecosystems. Project officers are working with local industries, fishermen and wildlife groups to map areas of economic activity and of ecological importance and to begin to develop proposals for a network meeting the needs of local people, as well as the marine environment.
The process will need to be capable of enabling the designation of networks of sites in reasonable time to ensure that necessary protection can be provided and international obligations met.
Page last modified: 4 April 2008