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Falklands Conservation |
The long awaited new Nature Conservation legislation for the Falklands should be in place during the first half of next year, if the Draft Bill, soon to be published, is accepted.
However, getting the legislation right is one thing, applying much of its content as quickly as possible in a meaningful way is another. This is particularly the case for the new classification system for protected areas. Currently there are two categories of areas protected for nature conservation - 'Nature Reserve' and 'Wild Animal and Bird Sanctuary'. The new proposal is for a single classification of National Nature Reserve (NNR), with a different definition from the same name in the UK. Within this there will be a range of categories covering all manner of reasons for designating a protected area for nature conservation purposes.
It is also proposed that areas currently designated as either Sanctuaries or Nature Reserves will automatically become NNRs on adoption of the new legislation. This has created an urgent need to review these sites, not only in terms of their nature conservation value, but also how that value should be preserved, and in some cases enhanced. In order to achieve this, Falklands Conservation will be working closely with the Falkland Islands Government Environmental Planning Department, and landowners in cases where land is privately owned, to prepare reviews of each individual site. For the majority this will be long overdue.
Designation in the past has been an ad hoc process with little or no attempt made to place a proposed site in a wider context of what needs to be preserved and why. Furthermore, a majority of sites currently protected are offshore islands with few sites protected on the two mainland islands. It is also the case that many sites in the past were protected by virtue of their importance to seabirds and marine mammals whilst other aspects of Falklands biodiversity, such as the flora or value as wetland sites, have been largely ignored. A review process will hopefully help to focus efforts towards developing a more strategic site protection plan.
It will also be invaluable in developing a framework for preparing Management Plans for all existing sites as well as those designated in the future. Historically, designation has been regarded as the end rather than the beginning of efforts to safeguard particular features of interest. For many of the smaller offshore islands, this has probably been sufficient in the short term. In other cases, considerable loss of conservation value has resulted from a lack of planning to meet specific objectives. Work during the summer months will begin the process of identifying some of those objectives as well as considering possible action plans which might be adopted whilst recognising the resource constraints.
In the longer term, it is hoped that we will be able to use Falkland ConservationŐs links with organisations such as the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to develop in the Falklands the capacity to more fully protect and manage sites in a way which meets obligations of international treaties, such as the Biodiversity Convention.
Falklands Conservation will continue to consider the option of purchase of land with a high nature conservation value should it become available. With the recent acquisition of Outer and Double Islands, our charity now holds title to eighteen offshore islands supporting a wide variety of habitats, flora and fauna. A start has already been made by Robin Woods in preparing Management Plans for each of them. To date, only one of our island reserves has been afforded statutory protection. The Twins, an island in the north west adjacent to Carcass Island, is designated a Wild Animal and Bird Sanctuary. Under the new legislation we will be actively seeking statutory protection for many more of our reserves. We hope that such an active and positive approach will encourage other landowners to protect, in perpetuity, the wildlife which they themselves value so highly.
A new plant has been added to the list of those plants unique to the Islands. It is Moore's Plantain, named after David Moore who found the plant at the south side of Empire Beach on the west coast of Ten Shilling Bay Peninsula in Port Stephens in 1964.
However it has only recently been recognised as a new endemic. When Knud Rahn of the University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden examined known specimens of the Plantaginaceae from southern South America he realised that the plant collected by David Moore represented a previously undescribed species.
It is a perennial plant which forms small flat groups of rosettes of densely packed grey leaves, which grow into low cushions and large hummocks up to 50cm in diameter and 23cm high. It has tiny flowers. Although superficially resembling the Thrift Plantain Plantago barbata the hairy leaves of Moore's Plantain, the generally grey appearance of the plant and the fact that the leaves are not shiny, make it fairly easily distinguished. There is also some similarity to the Balsam-bog, but the leaf shape is quite different. Moore's has simple pointed tip while the Balsam-bog has a prominently three-lobed tip which is often strongly curved.
This is the second endemic plant to have its stronghold in the Port Stephens area. The Falkland False Plantain Nastanthus falklandicus has also only been recorded along this part of the southwestern coast of West Falkland. It may be that there are local geological or soil conditions in this area which make it of very special botanic interest.
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Patron: HRH The Duke of York CVO ADC Member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature | BirdLife International Representative |