WCC 2020 Res 055 - Activity Report

ECO with others including iwi and hapu(Maori tribes and subtribes) continues to press for genuine MPAS and for the New Zealand fishing industry and Ministry to stop pretending that Bogus Protected Areas qualify as marine protected areas.

The Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand, ECO, has pressed in several jurisdictions and often in concert with other ENGOs, pressed for the conservation purpose of MPAs and OECMs to be a key criterion and focus of protected areas. In particular we have pressed for an end to bottom trawling on seamounts and associated features, and vulnerable marine ecosystems. We have raised the issue in both policy and in scientific fora in New Zealand and in the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management areas and else where. We have called for the New Zealand "Benthic Protected Areas" to be recognised as Bogus Protected areas since they were established on the initiative of the industrial fishing interests in New Zealand as a means of avoiding conservation-inspired protected areas, not for the purpose of conservation.