Letter to the Editor

From:  Rick MacPherson
Director of Conservation Programs
The Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL)

Coral Reef Alliance footprint

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I’ve just returned from the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where nearly 3,000 scientists, conservationists, and government officials met to strategize solutions to coral reef destruction.

The bad news: Ocean acidification has joined climate change, over fishing, and coastal development as an urgent and major threat to coral reef health around the world.

Fiji-beauty

 

The good news: CORAL’s targeted method of creating effectively managed marine protected areas (MPAs) was identified as the best way to protect coral reefs.

Like taking vitamins to fortify your immune system, CORAL gives reefs a fighting chance against the major threats caused by human activities. Working within existing MPAs and identifying opportunities to create new MPAs, CORAL builds reef resilience by reducing the damage caused by such factors as marine recreation, unsustainable fishing, and lack of local capacity for conservation.

Less than one third of roughly 1,200 MPAs worldwide have the resources and knowledge to manage and enforce their protected status. Although approximately 18% of coral reefs are located in MPAs, only 2% of these MPAs have adequate conservation capacity.

While these statistics may sound daunting, they prove that our Coral Reef Sustainable Destination approach—which focuses on creating strong and effective MPA management—is the best chance we have to save coral reefs. Admittedly, the news about coral reefs is alarming, but it is by no means too late to save them if we act immediately.

CORAL’s recent successes speak for themselves:

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Five years ago, the biggest local threat to the Namena Marine Reserve in Fiji was anchor damage from marine recreation operators. With CORAL’s help, Namena will become a completely anchor-free zone this summer.

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In 2007, CORAL and its conservation partners facilitated the first voluntary standards for sustainable marine recreation along the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef in Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala. With CORAL’s help, the government of Belize is pushing to transform the standards into law.

Last week, we joined with our colleagues at ICRS to issue a worldwide call to action:

To save coral reefs, we must focus on improving the management of existing MPAs and creating new MPAs as quickly and effectively as possible.

CORAL is answering this call in the field on a daily basis. With your generous support, our strategic plan to expand our program sites from seven to seventeen in the next five years will make real and proven impacts on the health of our planet’s coral reefs.

This tremendous validation of our work was a major victory for CORAL and all of its donors. Thank you for believing in us—and for helping us make people’s lives better by protecting coral reefs.

Please call (US code415-834-0900) or email if you’d like to learn more about our work and ways to get involved.