For example, fisheries that accidentally catch seabirds could fund conservation interventions, like the eradication of rats from islands, and thus cost-effectively offset their direct impacts while still making a profit from fishing.
While a compensatory approach will not work for all seabirds and sea turtles, many endangered populations face multiple threats. Some of those threats are associated with revenue generating activities, such as fisheries bycatch, while others are not, as in rats preying on seabird chicks. All these threats are conservation opportunities, and a framework that allows for verifible offsets could result in cost-effective biodiversity conservation gains.
In addition to its direct benefits for biodiversity conservation, a compensatory mitigation framework in conjuction with current practices would contribute to the larger goal of sustainable fisheries by incoporating externalities into the cost of fishing. With a management framework that is directly tied to the level of bycatch, fishers could increase their profit margins by avoiding bycatch. This would provide an an individual incentive to develop innovative fishing practices rather than racing to fish before closures are imposed due to bycatch limits.
Contact Information:
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C. Josh Donlan
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Phone: +1 607-227-9768
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E-mail: jdonlan@advancedconservation.org
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Chris Wilcox
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Phone: +61 3-6232-5306
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Email: Chris.Wilcox@csiro.au
Compensatory Mitigation
Designing Marine Biodiversity Management Policy
The social and economic importance of fisheries and the biological realities of overfishing and fisheries bycatch result in major tensions over ocean resources.
Fisheries bycatch is causing significant environmental damage including substantial impacts on endangered seabirds and sea turtles, which is increasingly resulting in social conflict, court battles,and fisheries closures.
Fishing modifications have reduced bycatch for some seabirds and sea turtles. However, reducing the impact on other seabird and sea turtle species has proven difficult. Even for species where bycatch can be largely avoided, some level of bycatch mortality will likely always occur.
Seabirds and sea turtles spend part of their lives on land where they go to breed. On breeding islands and coastal beaches, these species also suffer from anthropogenic impacts such as predation by invasive species like as rats and feral cats, coastal development, and egg or adult harvesting for human consumption.
A compensatory mitigation approach could help with the sustainable management of some endangered seabirds and sea turtles, and contribute significantly to the their recovery.
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