The expansion of the barrier reef marine reserve network received an international conservation prize this week, recognising a decade of work that placed a further eleven percent of territorial waters under protection.
“The reef recovered because the fishers who depend on it helped draw the boundaries.”
— Lead marine biologist on the programme
Co-management with fishing cooperatives
The programme's distinguishing feature is that replenishment zones were negotiated with fishing cooperatives rather than imposed on them. Coral cover inside the protected areas has risen from eleven to nineteen percent since monitoring began.
Researchers warned that bleaching events driven by warmer water remain the single largest threat, and that no amount of local management fully offsets them.
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