November 2024 – The Marine Mammals Management Toolkit has be published in Marine Policy, recognising its contribution to improving the effectiveness of management plans for Area-based Management Tools (ABMT).
Marine Policy has published a new article highlighting the value and impact of the Marine Mammals Management Toolkit – a tool designed to enhance the management effectiveness of Area-Based Management Tools (ABMTs) for marine mammal conservation.
The toolkit enables marine managers to assess and improve conservation strategies in protected marine areas and presents an overview of the protected areas where the Self-Assessment Tool (SAT) has been utilised by managers to understand strengths and gaps in existing management plans, or alternatively, to develop effective plans for conservation.
As of 2024, a total of 24 ABMTs, across 18 countries, have utilised the SAT. The manuscript does not present the results of individual assessments from the use of the SAT; however, it is supplemented by two case studies – The Bermuda Marine Mammal Sanctuary and the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
In Bermuda, the SAT highlighted a need for greater proactivity regarding the management of novel marine activities, such as renewable energy and aquaculture, and the associated consequences of these activities for marine mammals. In Stellwagen, the SAT served as a baseline for management effectiveness, enabling the tracking of performance measures for each developed action plan.
Overall, the publication presents the SAT, and the wider Marine Mammals Management Toolkit, as valuable aids for countries to achieve their national and international commitments, notably Targets 1, 3, 4, and 21 of the Global Biodiversity Framework, while providing a dedicated Protected Area Management Effectiveness (PAME) tool to aid managers to strengthen the level of protection afforded to marine mammals.
Access the publication in Marine Policy here, or download the pre-print.
Cite the publication:
Dallison, T. et al. (2025) ‘Effectively managing area-based management tools: A new toolkit for the conservation of marine mammals’, Marine Policy, 172, p. 106492. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2024.106492.
