On November 30th, Francis introduced the Marine Mammals Management Toolkit at the Mediterranean MPA 2020 Forum in Monaco. The presentation was delivered under the theme “A showcase of initiatives for mobile species conservation” and was delivered alongside presentations focusing on the need for population-level monitoring of cetaceans and support mechanisms for filling knowledge gaps for vulnerable species.
Francis delivered an overview of the Twinning and the toolkit, focusing on the key components and how these can be adopted and utilised to a) develop the Mediterranean MPA Post-2020 Roadmap and b) to monitor and evaluate objectives and actions.
On December 2nd, a workshop titled “Training on Two Innovative Toolkits for MPA Managers to Assess MPA Marine Mammals Management and MPA Resilience-based Management” was hosted as a side-event following the Mediterranean MPA 2020 Forum. An overview of the Ocean Governance project, and each respective twinning, was provided and subsequently Francis delivered an introduction and applied walkthrough of the toolkit with a core focus on the Self-Assessment Tool.
The aim of the workshop was to not only introduce the Toolkit and SAT to MPA managers in the Mediterranean, but to also gather valuable feedback on the function and accessibility of the SAT. We received valuable feedback on the toolkit through this workshop and each participant indicated that the SAT posed questions that had not been considered previously thus bolstering management plans and that managers would likely adopt the toolkit for temporal monitoring of their MPA management plans.
