Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Micronesia - showing the World how to do it!

Priority areas for shark conservation; each area was selected because it contains either the top 5% of species richness or endemism for each of 93 major shark biogeographic units (areas characterized by the presence of a unique set of species as identified by a cluster analysis) - click for detail.

Wow!
The juggernaut that is the Pew Environment Group's global shark campaign powers on.
This time, Matt applauds (we know what that means) the 15th Micronesian Chief Executive Summit for having decided to establish the world's first regional mega sanctuary for Sharks. The EEZs of the Federated States of Micronesia and its four member States, The Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau, the Territory of Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands span a whopping two million square miles equaling two-thirds of the land area of the United States - if enforced, this is truly a monumental step forward for the cause!
Once again, I am impressed!

Incidentally, check out the picture at the top.
It is from this recent open source paper (read it!) that identifies the global Shark hotspots as defined by species richness and/or endemism. The map itself shows the priority areas for Shark conservation - and Micronesia is clearly one of them!
But obviously, there remains much to do!

As always, kudos, thank you, well done, bravo!

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