Salty Waters
By The Salty Waters
In November 12th, a fairly major piece of legislation that will affect our coasts hugely over the next few years and beyond, received Royal Assent and passed from Bill to Act with hardly a whisper - the “Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009”.
Some might have heard of the more contentious coastal access part of the package that aims to enable a coastal route right around the coast of England and along most stretches, access to the land and foreshore ‘below’ that. (There will be exceptions including high security and hazardous areas such as airports and boat yards, private gardens near the house and some more sensitive wildlife sites but the expectations are that these will be circumnavigated). However, within the South Hams with our part of the existing South West Coastal Path, I don’t expect things to change much along our part of the coast although there are some questions about access along the edge of our estuaries.
There was a recent consultation draft released by Natural England that has just closed, that covers this very area. http://naturalengland.etraderstores.com/NaturalEnglandShop/NE222 I did feel that the draft was properly sympathetic to the sensitivities of estuarine mudflats and saltmarshes, to both the disturbance of wildlife and their trampling, although more might be made of the need to closely control dogs particularly during longer periods of cold weather as we’ve just had. Around our local estuaries though, again, I expect the route will continue to follow the present Coastal Path, using the ferries or traditional shallow wading points to cross the estuaries near their mouths.
A new governmental authority is being set up, the Marine Management Organisation ( already commonly known as the “MMO” ), that will take charge of areas such as marine licensing and navigation, and pick up new areas such as marine planning up to the Mean High Water Mark (meaning a shared responsibility with Local Authorities over the foreshore), marine nature conservation and fisheries management. There will be lots of draft policies being drawn up over the next few years, all with a high level of ‘stakeholder engagement’ or public consultation – there is an obvious danger of ‘consultation fatigue’ but for those of us with a greater interest in our coast and seas - if you don’t engage, you won’t be heard!
Part of this process, and we really are well ahead of the game down in the south-west, is the generation of a network of new Marine Conservation Zones (“MCZ”s) that aim to protect defined areas for their habitats and wildlife, both common and rare, for all our futures. These MCZs, together with existing protected sites will help make up a network of marine protected areas around the UK. In the south-west, this is being coordinated by the Finding Sanctuary project. They are really crying out for everyone to tell them which parts of the sea they use and value, why and how – really so that the very ‘best’ areas may be more highly protected for their natural communities, others be kept as open fishing grounds or a level of protection between. There is a responsible and careful balance that needs to be met here, especially for some of us who are lucky enough to have dived in the area and know the beautiful richness of our coast but who also like to have their fish and chips and eat them! [A more sustainable choice of fish, please would be good though!]
Again, it is hugely important that everyone who cares and has any level of knowledge does engage - otherwise fishermen stand to lose important fishing grounds; recreational boaties and divers, their favourite playgrounds and the marine environment its richest sites … there will need to be compromises made but unless we all try, what hope do we give our sea’s future. The present “possible Special Areas of Conservation” around much of the South Devon coast will be part of this network of marine protected areas, but are being proposed as part of something called the European Habitats Directive which can only consider their nature conservation value on scientific grounds - socioeconomic impacts cannot be taken into account.
For me, I’m excited to see what will happen when some more highly protected sites are left untouched to completely renaturalise; and as they found on some reefs in New Zealand, they may change ‘back’ into a quite different community that existed before the divers aqualung was invented (1943)?!
If you’d like to engage in these exciting marine developments, there are lots of key words above that you can use on a famous search engine on the internet (also available at libraries) to find out more, download the consultation documents and respond to them; or you can attend one of our local estuary Forum meetings.
First Published February 2010 By The Dart