Introduction

The Biodiversity Council welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposal to prepare six draft management plans for 44 Australian Marine Parks (the Proposal).

Our understanding

The management plans for 44 Australian Marine Parks are due to expire in 2028. These include:

● Coral Sea Marine Park Management Plan

● Temperate East Marine Parks Network Management Plan

● South-west Marine Parks Network Management Plan

● North-west Marine Parks Network Management Plan

● North Marine Parks Network Management Plan

A new, separate management plan is proposed for Norfolk Marine Park. This is subject to a separate consultation process. The Director of National Parks intends to prepare six new

management plans covering 44 marine parks.

The Proposal is not a consultation on the draft management plans, but an earlier step where the government is seeking input to inform drafting.

Target 3 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (the ‘30 by 30’ target) is to ensure that at least 30% of marine areas are effectively conserved and managed through ecologically representative protected areas by 2030. The National Roadmap for protecting and conserving 30% of Australia’s land by 2030 (the Land Roadmap) states that “opportunities for strengthening marine protection, consistent with the 30 by 30 target, are being explored through the Sustainable Ocean Plan and the 10-yearly reviews of Australian Marine Park Management Plans [emphasis added].”

We also note that a recent ‘scientific consensus statement’ was signed by numerous colleagues, including members of the Biodiversity Council, and submitted to Australian Marine Parks. We fully support and endorse this statement, which can be viewed here.

In this submission we (1) add some additional detail relating to the five actions proposed in the scientific consensus statement; and (2) extend the list of considerations with another four additional action points, bringing the total number of comments to nine.

Our nine priority actions are summarised here: Please see the attached PDF for more detail.

1. Protect at least 30%, as a minimum, of each of Australia’s marine bioregions within highly protected no-take zones (IUCN Ia or II), implemented according to Comprehensive, Adequate and Representative (CAR) principles and with priority given to productive continental shelf, slope, and coastal ecosystems that are currently under-represented.

2. Commit to and implement no future downgrading, downsizing, or degazettement of existing, highly protected marine park zones.

3. Remove industrial extractive activities, including trawling, longlining, and mining, from all marine parks.

4. Adequately resource marine park management, enforcement, monitoring, research, and community engagement to avoid the proliferation of ineffective “paper parks”.

5. Invest in national communications and education initiatives that improve public understanding of marine park protection levels, ocean stewardship and Indigenous engagement.

6. Embed climate adaptation into management plans.

7. Explicitly consider land-sea linkages and develop management strategies for resolving land-based threats to marine biodiversity.

8. Develop and implement a national connectivity plan that considers potential changes in connectivity under climate change and seeks to fill gaps between existing protected areas, with particular reference to migratory species and long-distance dispersers and those that are reliant on transient resources.

9. Stronger integration of MPA management plans and related legislation with other relevant policy and governance tools, particularly relating to fisheries, to ensure seascape management rather than a piecemeal approach.