Remote French Overseas Territory Provides Huge Opportunity for Marine Conservation

Excerpt from pewtrusts.org

A proposal to greatly expand marine protections across the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (commonly referred to by the French acronym TAAF), a scattered overseas territory in the southern Indian Ocean that is home to a richly diverse community of wildlife, continued to advance in December when France concluded a three-week public comment period on the measure. The proposal—which can be finalized by ministerial decree—would extend the safeguarded area by about 1 million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) and more than double the country’s total area of highly protected waters around the world.

The Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy Project submitted comments in support of the proposal and encouraged the French government to further expand the areas of high protection.

Under the proposal, France would protect the waters around three archipelagos: Saint Paul and Amsterdam Islands, Kerguelen, and Crozet. Collectively, the expansion would create by far the largest marine protected area (MPA) in French waters and would represent about 15% of the country’s global exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Further, if approved, the measure would more than double the percentage of France’s fully protected waters around the globe—increasing from 1.6% to 4% of the country’s EEZ.

The proposal would protect ecosystems that are vital to exceptional biodiversity, with resident and migratory marine life including orcas, whales, and several species of penguins, seals, and tuna. For example, Crozet and Kerguelen’s archipelagos provide refuge to the world’s largest king penguin colony and second-largest southern elephant seal colony, respectively. And Amsterdam is home to the roughly 30 remaining breeding pairs of Amsterdam albatross, a critically endangered species found nowhere else on Earth.