Seventeen innovative new projects will receive UK Government funding through the Darwin Plus initiative, to help protect and enhance the environment in the UK Overseas Territories. The seventh round of funding under the initiative, worth around £3.75m, will be shared amongst 17 projects around the globe. The funding will support international nature and help to achieve many of the commitments in the UK Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan.
If United Nations goals are met, 10% of the world’s oceans could be marine reserves by 2020, but it has been suggested that many of these reserves will represent protection on paper but not in practice. However, new research trialling remote satellite monitoring of illegal fishing activity in the protected waters of Ascension Island from the Oxford Program of Sustainable Oceans suggests that here at least these “paper park” fears are not fully supported by evidence.
While the relationship between the UK and Argentina is changing, the UK commitment to the people and sovereignty of the Falklands is unchanging, assured Prime Minister Theresa May in her Christmas speech to the Falklands.
Argentina has officially created two large marine protected areas: the Yaganes Marine National Park, lying off of the country’s southern tip, and the Namuncurá-Burdwood Bank II Marine National Park in the South Atlantic. Together, the two parks cover a total area of about 98,000 square kilometres.
The first study to investigate micro-plastics around Ascension Island and the Falkland Islands – two of the most remote locations in the South Atlantic Ocean – has found levels of contamination comparable with the waters around the UK.
The already endangered Tristan albatross and other seabird species are under threat from a particular breed of mice in Gough Island in the South Atlantic ocean, The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds warned Monday.Other species endangered by the mice include the Gough bunting and Atlantic petrel, the RSPB said.
Super-sized mice are killing millions of seabird chicks on a remote island in the South Atlantic, threatening some rare species with extinction. According to a study from the RSPB, the mice have learned to eat the eggs and chicks of the many millions of birds that make Gough Island their home.
Argentina plans to launch a delayed offshore licensing round in October as it seeks to explore a large frontier region in the South Atlantic for potential oil and natural gas production growth in the future. This was announced to oil executives in Houston by Argentina's energy secretary Javier Iguacel.
A spokesperson for British Forces South Atlantic Islands has dismissed stories that plans to refurbish Ascension Island runway are not to go ahead. The spokesperson told Penguin News on Thursday: “The commercial process is ongoing for the runway resurfacing works at Ascension which is led by the United States.
Perhaps fittingly the King Penguin was chosen as number one in the Falkland Islands Tourist Board’s (FITB) 7 Wonders of the Falklands survey. Over the last three months FITB has asked past and present visitors to the Islands, as well as residents, what they would consider to be their seven wonders.