Oceana consideres the convention between the Balearic Government and the national police to protect the Balearic Sea positive
This is a measure that Oceana has repeatedly requested and shows that an expansion to Cabrera protection does not pose an insurmountable cost.
Press Release Date: July 3, 2013
Location: Madrid
Contact:
Oceana Web | email: webadmin@oceana.org | tel.: 202.000.0000
‘El Govern’ must now restore the budget and Cabrera personnel to their 2011 levels in order to provide the essential resources for the park’s conservation.
Ocean considers the agreement reached between the Balearic Government’s Department of Agriculture, Environment, and Land and the Balearic National Police positive for coordinating the protection the island’s sea and land. This mainly affects the Cabrera National Park, marine reserves, and Natura 2000 areas. This measure has been supported for some time by Oceana in order to optimize resources earmarked for protection measures, and shows that Cabrera protected areas can be increased 10-fold without incurring additional cost.
Oceana considers the protection of natural spaces (in order to mitigate illegal fishing and other environmental aggressions) and the restoration of the budget and personnel assigned to environmental conservation essential. For this reason, the marine conservation organization insists that resources must be restored to 2011 levels before the drastic budget cuts, implying 5 million Euros annually earmarked for the management of Cabrera and the re-hiring of all personnel that had been made redundant as this is essential for the park’s conservation.
“We have spent a year denouncing the Balearic protected spaces’ unsustainable situation, being subject to a serious lack of resources for their conservation and management. This problem is especially notable in such relevant spaces as the Cabrera National Park, whose budget has been practically erased with a large part of their workers being let go”, states Xavier Pastor, Executive Director of Oceana in Europe. “A collaborative convention with the national police’s maritime service, such as the one indicated, is an opportunity to compensate, at least in part, for the errors committed by the Administration in terms of that management of their natural space”.
Ocean considers that this convention highlights that the increase in protection of Cabrera is viable, given that the inability to patrol a larger area has always been the main detractor to the protection of funds surrounding the current National Park. This proposal, presented by Ocean years ago, is based on the importance of those habitats that are found outside the park and are in danger due to illegal trawling.
“Measures like this one do not suppose an extraordinary cost to the Administration, much like the supervision of the blue boxes of vessels that illegally operate in prohibited depths at numerous locations in the Balearic Islands such as the Migjorn reserve or the For den Moreu to the east of Cabrera”, adds Pastor.
