Marilles makes its proposals for the Cabrera PRUG and calls for greater ambition in marine protection

Marilles Foundation submittedits proposals to the Master Plan for Use and Management (PRUG) of the Cabrera National Park, to strengthen the actual effectiveness of marine protection and ensure the conservation of its most valuable habitats.

In its proposals, Marilles highlights the need to expand the strict protection zone to include Fort d’en Moreu, an area of great ecological value  home to vulnerable habitats such as corals, gorgonians, maërl beds, and deep-sea species with very limited recovery capacity. Marilles calls for this area to be declared a no-take zone (NTZ), i.e. free from any extractive activity.

Marilles also welcomes the proposal to increase the number of NTZs by a factor of 10 or 12, but warns that this expansion must be based on sound scientific criteria. It is not simply a matter of increasing the area, but of providing better protection where it is most needed. Further studies are required to identify the habitats of greatest ecological value and to ensure planning is based on scientific and environmental criteria. That is why it is important to have a zoning plan designed with habitats and ecological functions in mind, and o ensure consistency with other protected areas in the Mallorca Channel to guarantee ecological connectivity.

Greater surveillance and scientific monitoring

Marilles warns that increased regulatory protection will only be effective if accompanied by a genuine strengthening of surveillance. Poaching is still a problem in the park, and without effective control, protection risks remaining a dead letter.

Furthermore,Marilles calls for improvements to ecological monitoring programmes for marine biodiversity, with clear indicators to assess the state of habitats and the effectiveness of management measures. This will enable progress towards adaptive management of marine protected areas, which is particularly important in the context of such uncertain climate change.

Nuria Salmerón, marine protected areas specialist at Marilles: ‘Cabrera is one of the most valuable marine areas in the Mediterranean, but the level of protection applied so far has been insufficient, to the extent that the expected results in biodiversity conservation have not been achieved. This archipelago is the jewel in the crown of the western Mediterranean, or at least it should be, but to achieve this, the Balearic government and the Spanish government must step up their ambition, resources, and management capacity. At Marilles, we are confident that the PRUG approval process is an opportunity to position Cabrera as an international benchmark for effective marine protection, aligned with European and global biodiversity conservation objectives.”