More than 275,000 people and leading scientific and conservation organisations from the UK and around the world have called on the UK government to establish a protected area in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which is comprised of the Chagos Islands and its surrounding waters.

If established, the Chagos Protected Area would be the largest marine reserve in the world and play a vital role in fulfilling the UK’s global international conservation commitments.

Rich marine biodiversity The support for a marine reserve comes as the UK government closes its three-month public consultation period today [Friday 5 March 2010] on future management of the Chagos Islands. The government will now consider the creation of a Chagos Protected Area, a designation that would safeguard the rich marine biodiversity of the islands and their surrounding waters by prohibiting extractive activities, such as fishing.

A final decision is expected sometime this spring. “The world’s oceans are under increasing stress from overfishing, climate change, and pollution.” “Britain has an historic opportunity to protect this very special and rare place, which is comparable in importance to the Galapagos Islands or the Great Barrier Reef,” said William Marsden, chairman of the Chagos Conservation Trust and a member of the Chagos Environment Network (CEN).

“The public and the scientific community have spoken, and now it is up to the government to secure the UK’s ocean legacy.”

The CEN is a collaboration of leading conservation and scientific organisations seeking to protect the rich biodiversity of the Chagos Islands and its surrounding waters, including The Chagos Conservation Trust, The Linnean Society of London, The Marine Conservation Society, the Pew Environment Group, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The Zoological Society of London, and Professor Charles Sheppard of the University of Warwick.

The Chagos form an archipelago comprising 55 islands spread over 210,000 square miles – an area twice the size of the UK’s land surface.

Due to their remoteness, the islands have some of the cleanest seas in the world and contain as much as half of the Indian Ocean’s remaining healthy coral reefs, making it one of the most ecologically sound reef systems on the planet.

“The world’s oceans are under increasing stress from overfishing, climate change, and pollution. Few areas around the world still exist that are largely unspoiled, and the waters around the Chagos Islands are one of them,” said Alistair Gammell with the Pew Environment Group, a member of the CEN. “A decision to designate this area as a highly protected marine reserve would make the UK a global leader in ocean protection.”

Courtesy:shiptalk.com