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A “New Wave” of Protection for Marine Wilderness Areas

In 2006 the Government of Kiribati established the Phoenix Islands Protected Area, a marine protected area covering almost 160,000 square miles (an area the size of California) – almost 12% of the Micronesian country’s waters – and safeguarding an area of immense biological richness. Also in 2006, the Bush Administration established the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, protecting the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands: at almost 140,000 square miles, this area is larger than all of the United States’ national parks combined. Finally, this year, one of the final acts of the Bush Administration was to add the Marianas Trench Marine National Monument, the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monument, totaling almost 200,000 square miles, and making these areas the largest marine protected area in the world (though some critics have pointed out that the area is not as well protected as it could have been). Aside from Antarctica, the planet has not seen such large scale marine protection since the establishment of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park starting in the 1970s.

These new protected areas come not a moment too soon. News of serious marine degradation – collapsing fisheries, dead zones, acidification, invasive species, coral reef die offs and species extinctions – is in the news daily. And to date only a tiny fraction of the world’s oceans are protected: at less than one percent of the world’s oceans versus about 12% of the planet’s land area, marine conservation lags far behind terrestrial conservation.

Even though these enormous, remote areas represent a small fraction of what’s necessary and possible, it’s clearly very encouraging to see so many very large areas established in such a short space of time. These marine protected areas (MPAs) set an important example and precedent. They also provide a new impetus to discussions on marine wilderness – how to define marine wilderness biologically, and how to protect marine wilderness from a protected area standpoint.

This conversation is decades old (obviously the concept of marine wilderness is much older).  One place where this discussion has been held is in WILD’s World Wilderness Congresses. At the second WWC in Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser declared the establishment of the Capricornia Section of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, which includes a wilderness designation, and each of the WWCs since have discussed the issue of marine wilderness. This topic has also been taken up by other conservation organizations, and in the literature, and the United States has several wilderness areas that include some marine area.

Nonetheless, the concept of marine wilderness has yet to be adopted more broadly, and applied to more MPAs around the world. One reason is that there wasn’t sufficient scientific knowledge on what constitutes a biologically intact marine area, and how many such areas remain around the planet. A major new study by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis assessing the state of the world’s oceans is a critical first step in answering this question. Increased experience with MPAs around the world, and plans for developing a global network of MPAs by IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) and others also invites more discussion of marine wilderness. Finally, new political will – as evidenced by the very large new MPAs listed above – indicates that the moment has finally come to define the marine wilderness concept more clearly from a biological standpoint, and to “operationalize” it from an MPA standpoint. WILD is working to develop a consortium of marine conservation partners at WILD9: The 9^th World Wilderness Congress in Merida, Mexico in November of 2009. We hope the time has come for broader adoption of marine wilderness MPAs.

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