London wants to prohibit background trawling in half of English protected marine areas – Liberation
Fight against a « Destructive practice ». This is the objective of the United Kingdom, which unveiled a plan on Monday, June 9, to extend to more than half of the protected sea areas of England the prohibition background trawling. It is d‘One of the flagship subjects of the United Nations Conference on the Ocean which opens this Monday in Nice Monday.
After a consultation with the fishermen, the British Minister of the Environment Steve Reed hopes to be able to ban this controversial practice in « 41 protected areas of English seas, covering an area of 30,000 square kilometers ». « The backdrop destroys the most vulnerable areas of our oceans (…) Its impact is astounding, causing incalculable damage not only to the seabed, supposed to be protected, but to the whole of nature », he defended Sunday in the newspaper The Observer.
This prohibition should make it possible to protect marine habitats housing « Important species such as lobster, clams, soft corals and langoustines », and « »let the seabed reconstitute after the damage caused ”. The Greenpeace UK organization praised a « Excellent news for life and marine habitats », calling on the government to extend the ban on this practice « Brutal » And « Inadmissible » to all protected areas.
The United Kingdom thus displays its voluntarism on background trawling, which consists in scraping the seabed with a gigantic net To go up fish and crustaceans, and represents almost a quarter of world wild fishing, according to the Global Fishing Watch observatory.
There are currently in England 181 protected marine areas (AMP), which extend over an area of 93,000 square kilometers, or 40 % of English seas. The background trawling is already banished over 18,000 square kilometers from these areas, a figure that would rise to 48,000 km² with the government plan.
Steve Reed promised on Sunday that he would support the transition from the fishing industry, affected by the ban on this practice « Destructive », towards « More sustainable models, better for fishermen’s communities and the health of our seas ». A consultation will take place until September 1 to allow them to « Share their points of view and their observations », The government said in a statement.
The mining of seabed, the ratification of the international treaty on plastic pollution or The regulation of overfishing and illegal fishing are on the menu for the discussions of the third United Nations Conference on the Oceans (UNOC3) in Nice. About sixty heads of state and government are expected on Monday for the opening of this summit, co-organized by France and Costa Rica.
Restrictions or prohibitions of background trawling already exist in certain protected areas in the world, for example in the United States, Australia, Canada or Brazil. France has disappointed NGOs environmental protection by announcing a limitation of background trawling on 4 % of the hexagonal waters on Sunday, or about 15,000 km² newly protected.
The European Union, which published its strategy on Thursday to better protect the oceans, stands for the moment a simple recommendation, calling to end this practice by 2030 in protected areas.
For his part, Prince William, who was in Monaco on Sunday for a forum on the blue economy, called leaders around the world « See big » To save them « Fragile ecosystems » of the oceans.
