Rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area: Does it afford greater protection for marine turtles?

摘要: In 2004 the Australian Government implemented a revised zone-based management plan for Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area to increase protection of representative areas while minimising impacts economic viability important industries. this study we evaluated current zoning its capacity protect marine turtles from commercial trawling and netting activities at nesting sites inshore offshore foraging assess whether Marine Park Authority met their obligations under Representative Areas Program (RAP). We found that fisheries increased within 5- 10-km buffer zones all very-high, high- medium-priority were previously less than 100% protected. However, three very-high-priority six high-priority remain protected out 5 km, falling short objectives RAP. There variable increases in areas; however, each them proportion area fishing, fulfilling By using broader-scale by-catch dataset as proxy turtle abundance improvements are not species-specific can be attributed step-wise since mid 1990s.