The launch follows the passing, in November, of the Marine and Coastal Access Act (MCAA), for which The Wildlife Trusts campaigned for nearly a decade. The challenge for the next five years is to ensure the Act is effectively implemented – that urgent action is taken to turn the UK’s over-fished, over-exploited, and currently under-protected waters back into a thriving marine environment. The Wildlife Trusts have a clear vision for how this should happen, and a plan for achieving it within 20 years, a single generation.
The Wildlife Trusts are achieving great things across the UK, working at the local level to understand, protect and raise awareness of our marine wildlife and habitats, from seagrass meadows to dolphins and seals.
Despite just 38 miles of coastline, the Tees Valley has a lot to offer with respect to marine wildlife. The coastal cliffs of the Tees Valley including the Trust’s reserve at Hunt Clifff near Saltburn are home to internationally important numbers of breeding kittiwakes, alongside other seabirds such as fulmars and cormorants, while the grassland clifftops are home to coastal wildflowers including Dyer’s Greenweed, Spiny Restharrow, Sea Plantain and Wild Carrot.
The majority of the coastline however, consists of shingle beaches and sand and mud flats. Such areas are both important breeding areas for little terns and ringed plovers, and important feeding grounds for sanderling and oystercatchers.
As a direct result of environmental improvements by local industry and the work of the Trust and other organisations such as INCA, common seals have returned to the Teesmouth after an absence of nearly 60 years, the only known estuary in Europe where seals have done so for this reason. Small but successful breeding populations have established themselves at Seal Sands, Greatham Creek and Billingham Beck, and now account for 2% of the English population.
Professor Aubrey Manning, BBC television presenter and president of The Wildlife Trusts, launched the Living Seas vision¹. He said: “The Living Seas vision is very direct in its aims. It sets out a clear plan of how we, The Wildlife Trusts, and our partners and supporters, can help achieve them. The opportunities that the Marine and Coastal Access Act has opened up need to be seized on immediately. We can no longer continue to treat the oceans as limitless. In particular, we need an effective and well-managed network of Marine Protected Areas by 2012.
“We may not get another opportunity to make Living Seas a reality. The future of our oceans hangs in the balance, and we want to tip it in the right direction for wildlife, and for the people – all of us – who depend upon it.”
Steve Ashton, People and Wildlife Manager for Tees Valley Wildlife Trust, said: “These are exciting times and the Trust is looking forward to working with local people to ensue that we achieve the Living Seas vision of thriving wildlife from the depths of the ocean to the coastal shallows.”
To find out more about Living Seas, to download our vision or to learn about local events occurring at your local Wildlife Trusts coastal nature reserves visit http://www.northseawildlife.org.uk/
The Wildlife Trusts have been campaigning for many years for comprehensive legislation to achieve better protection for marine wildlife and the effective management of our seas. For more information, visit
http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/index.php?section=environment:marine
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