(Defra: The Department of Environement, Food and Rural Affairs - ed.)

The charity’s concern follows today’s statement by Environment Minister, Richard Benyon, MP, of a delay to the public consultation, and therefore the designation, of Marine Conservation Zones (MCZ) around the English coast, citing a lack of evidence from the regional projects involved in the process.

MCS says the delay in designation of a network of MCZs in England until 2013, will be hugely disappointing to the million people involved in the three year long process, which has cost over eight million pounds.

Good and bad news
MCS says today’s written statement, from Environment Minister Richard Benyon, is both encouraging and concerning.

It's Senior Biodiversity Policy Officer, Dr Jean-Luc Solandt, says the fact that the public consultation at the end of 2012 will include all sites recommended by the Regional Projects is good news, however getting to that point may not be plain sailing, because a new more robust evidence base is required for each site to ensure they are designated.

“Defra says advice from the Science Advisory Panel indicates a number of ‘gaps and limitations in the scientific evidence base supporting the MCZ recommendations’. We want to know how many more millions, and how much more time will need to be spent to ensure Defra gets the evidence it is seeking.

"This is hugely frustrating, as the process has already eliminated some of the best sites for biodiversity protection because of over-riding and over-riding economic interests of the industry stakeholders in the room.”

Natural England - map reproduced according to permisions stated on Copyright notice

The Marine Conservation Zone Project map

Wide support
MCS received over half a million messages of support for marine reserves during 2009. The charity had representatives on all four regional MCZ projects between 2009 and 2011 and provided evidence of wider society support for protection via its Your Seas Your Voice website.

Dr Solandt says that MCS, having been closely involved with the regional projects, believes they have considered all the best available scientific evidence for the sites, but this was not adequately described in the final reports; “We urge Defra to get together with key scientists and conservation agencies involved in the regional processes to review the available evidence used for each draft MCZ so that we can confidently designate key sites. Let’s hope this saves the vast majority of UK sites that have been put forward.”