Marine Mammal Protected Areas

IUCN SSC WCPA Task Force Group Leaders

For more information on the SSC WCPA Task Force visit their website

Objectives:

a) facilitating mechanisms by which this “community of practice” can collaborate, share information and experience, access and disseminate knowledge and tools for establishing, monitoring, and managing marine mammal protected areas (MMPA) and promote effective spatial solutions and best practices for marine mammal conservation;

b) bolstering capacity within the MMPA community by exposing it to state-of-the-art tools from the wider MPA and place-based conservation world;

c) enabling the implementation of global MPA targets and agreements; and

d) enhancing opportunities for cooperation, communication, exposure of related products and expertise to a farwider audience.

Determining Important Marine Mammal Areas—IMMAs— in the World’s Oceans

In 2016-2019, the MMPAs Task Force is rolling out a tool to apply criteria to identify and potentially protect marine mammal habitats. This tool—developed through workshops and extensive scientific and public consultation—is called “Important Marine Mammal Areas”, or IMMAs. IMMAs are defined as “discrete portions of habitat, important to marine mammal species, that have the potential to be delineated and managed for conservation.” IMMAs consist of areas that deserve space-based protection and can be seen as a potential marine mammal layer for consideration by governments, intergovernmental organisations, conservation groups, and the general public.

The IMMA tool will bring a standardized process to the preparation of data for:

• identification of IUCN marine key biodiversity areas (KBAs), as part of speices and ecosystem conservation in national waters and on the high seas,

• the selection of MPAs and MPA networks as well as marine mammal habitat zones within existing MPAs,

• the CBD process to identify ecologically or biologically significant areas (EBSAs), mainly on the high seas,

• marine spatial planning (MSP), a process for allocating spatial and temporal distribution of human activities in marine areas to achieve ecological and economic objectives, which is being adopted over the next few years by more than 90 governments of the world, and

• the identification of areas where marine mammals are threatened by ship strike or noise, useful for International Maritime Organisation (IMO) directives and particularly sensitive sea areas (PSSAs).

The IMMA tool mirrors the Important Bird Area (IBA) approach adopted by BirdLife some years ago which has been successful in terms of ensuring the consistent and comprehensive identification of critical bird habitats on land and at sea.

Go to the IUCN MMPA TASK FORCE website for the Joint statement about IMMAs and KBAs from IUCN WCPA/SSC Joint Task Forces on Marine Mammal Protected Areas and Biodiversity and Protected Areas, as well as for the MMPAs Task Force Mission Statement and further Information about Task Force workshops, meetings and other news.

Information about conferences and proceedings from the International Committee on Marine Mammal Protected Areas (ICMMPA)

A list of members of the IUCN WCPA/SSC Joint Marine Mammal Protected Areas Task Force can be found here.  Membership is kept at approximately 20-30 members and reviewed annually.