Kirsten Grorud-Colvert, Jane Lubchenco, and Allison K. Barner
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226422954
- eISBN:
- 9780226423142
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226423142.003.0002
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Environmental Studies
We propose an additional, bold focus for the centennial of the US National Park Service: to make protection of special places in the ocean as important as it has been on land. This vision reflects ...
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We propose an additional, bold focus for the centennial of the US National Park Service: to make protection of special places in the ocean as important as it has been on land. This vision reflects the fact that 55% of the United States by area is in the ocean, but only 15% of the US ocean is strongly protected. Marine protected areas vary greatly in extractive activities permitted, ranging from fully protected marine reserves that allow no destructive activities to multiple use areas that are zoned to permit different kinds of extractive uses. Ocean protected areas have grown rapidly from 0.08% of the global ocean coverage a decade ago to 1.8% today. Little of the open ocean is protected because the legal tools for creating protected areas reside within individual countries. Using top-down authorities have led to many of our most beloved large, blue parks, but most existing coastal protected areas are small and were developed from combined efforts of diverse stakeholders. We discuss pathways to ocean protection in the United States, review the scientific lessons learned over the past century of park management, and propose a focus on “blue” to complement the first century’s focus on “green” protected areas.Less
We propose an additional, bold focus for the centennial of the US National Park Service: to make protection of special places in the ocean as important as it has been on land. This vision reflects the fact that 55% of the United States by area is in the ocean, but only 15% of the US ocean is strongly protected. Marine protected areas vary greatly in extractive activities permitted, ranging from fully protected marine reserves that allow no destructive activities to multiple use areas that are zoned to permit different kinds of extractive uses. Ocean protected areas have grown rapidly from 0.08% of the global ocean coverage a decade ago to 1.8% today. Little of the open ocean is protected because the legal tools for creating protected areas reside within individual countries. Using top-down authorities have led to many of our most beloved large, blue parks, but most existing coastal protected areas are small and were developed from combined efforts of diverse stakeholders. We discuss pathways to ocean protection in the United States, review the scientific lessons learned over the past century of park management, and propose a focus on “blue” to complement the first century’s focus on “green” protected areas.
