HALIFAX – Protecting spaces on land and in the world’s oceans is not enough to stem the worsening problem of biodiversity loss, say Canadian scientists who argue conservationists rely too much on the popular strategy.
Peter Sale of the United Nations University makes the assertion in a paper published Thursday, saying he wanted it to be a “wake-up call” to groups that heavily promote the approach.
“The very strong advocacy for the use of protected areas as a tool for managing biodiversity is definitely not sufficient,” Sale said from Hamilton upon the release of the paper in the Marine Ecology Progress Series.
“Focusing on protected areas as the only tool we need is inadequate and it’s woefully inadequate.”
Sale, the assistant director of the university’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, said protecting spaces is vital to helping ensure the survival of a variety of species in different ecosystems.
But he and lead author Camilo Mora of Dalhousie University in Halifax contend that closing areas to certain types of human activity should only be one tool in an array of conservation strategies.
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The marine scientists argue that the push by some environmental groups to limit or eliminate access to terrestrial or marine areas takes attention away from the more pressing problems of overpopulation, climate change, pollution and the increasing human demand on natural resources.
Keeping people out of certain marine spaces, for example, does little to shield species from the effects of acidification, species invasion and the depletion of fish stocks that might migrate to the protected area, they say.
“We have to look directly at how any people there are and how many goods and services they use,” Sale said. “This is the problem that has got to be dealt with and if we don’t deal with it, creating more protected areas simply isn’t going to do what people are claiming it should do.”
But Bettina Saier of the World Wildlife Fund dismisses the claim that her group is focused solely on promoting protected areas as the best defence against species loss.
The director of the ocean’s program said the group advocates a handful of strategies to combat biodiversity loss, including properly managing the spaces between protected areas, sustainable fisheries and consumption, and greater funding for biodiversity.
“We rely on a suite of conservation tools,” she said. “Marine protected areas are just part of the solution and only work in combination with other tools.”
Saier said the authors’ claim may have been true 10 to 20 years ago when protected spaces were becoming more popular, but is now “outdated.”
There are roughly 100,000 protected land and marine areas worldwide, covering 17 million square kilometres of land and two million square kilometres of oceans over 4,400 marine protected areas.
The authors estimate that about $6 billion is spent on protected areas, where $24 billion is needed to manage and establish them properly.
There are about eight Department of Fisheries marine protected areas in Canada and four Parks Canada national marine conservation areas.
Despite that, the authors say biodiversity is in “steep decline.”
Sale cites the Great Barrier Reef in Australia as being one of the best managed protected marine spaces, but one that is still seeing a loss of species variety.
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