Add your submission for the South Coast Marine Park | Act for Birds

Add your submission for the South Coast Marine Park

Where do you live?

Compose your email

Name

Email

Subject:

Dear Premier Cook and the WA Government,

I welcome the creation of the South Coast Marine Park. This is an incredible opportunity to protect a critical stretch of Australia’s globally significant Great Southern Reef – from east of Bremer Bay to the South Australian border – and to make sure future generations can enjoy WA’s much-loved south coast.

I support the joint management plans and the aspirations of the Traditional Owners of the south coast and recognise their enduring cultural connection and management of Sea Country.

I strongly support and ask you to retain the fully protected sanctuaries within the draft zoning plans.

However, I urge you to increase protection in areas where crucial sanctuaries are missing for key habitats or species.

To ensure the marine park achieves the world-class conservation outcomes the environment warrants, it is critically important that the zoning design follows the established scientific principles of representation, comprehensiveness, and adequacy to create a network of well-connected sanctuary areas.

In addition to retaining the proposed sanctuaries in the plans, I urge you to increase sanctuary protection to adequately protect the values that are missing or fall short of best practice, including the following areas and their surrounds which support birds: 
•	Mason Bay – highest concentration of mapped shallow reefs outside the Recherche Archipelago. 
•	Munglinup – connectivity with land nature reserve and a unique estuary with reefs. 
•	Investigator Island.
•	Cape Le Grand – some of the most extensive rhodolith, seagrass, rocky reefs, kelp, and island habitats that are under-represented in the Recherche Archipelago. 
•	Membinup – offshore area features extensive seagrass meadows, kelp, reefs and island habitats.   
•	Cape Arid.
•	Round Island – a breeding site for little penguins. 
•	Israelite Bay.
•	Six Mile Island –a breeding site for little penguins.

If any of these increases are not possible in these areas, I urge you to provide high levels of protection of similar values in other locations in the marine park.

Creating a world-class network of sanctuary zones within the South Coast Marine Park – like at Ningaloo and the Great Barrier Reef – is an opportunity to achieve a truly world-class conservation outcome for this unique and special part of Western Australia, to help keep our marine life healthy and support sustainable fishing and our treasured coastal lifestyle into the future.

West Australians are right behind south coast marine sanctuaries. YouGov polling from October 2023 found that 86 percent of West Australians, and 84 percent who identify as recreational fishers, support the creation of a network of fully protected marine sanctuaries in coastal waters east of Bremer Bay.

I support the provision of fair and reasonable compensation for any affected south coast commercial fishers to adjust their operations if required.

Further, I ask for the entire marine park, from east of Bremer Bay to the SA border and out to the State water limit, to exclude oil and gas exploration and extraction as these industrial activities are incompatible with marine biodiversity conservation and would put our south coast at risk.

I commend the Cook Government and the Traditional Owners for putting forward a plan to protect these globally significant waters that will be an asset for all West Australians, alongside Ningaloo and the Great Kimberley Marine Park. I urge for increased levels of protection to safeguard the south coast’s diverse marine life, sustainable fishing and treasured coastal lifestyle into the future.

Please count this as my submission to the South Coast Marine Park draft management plans.

How we use the data you enter on this form

BirdLife Australia Privacy Policy

Do Gooder (the advocacy platform powering this online action) processes personal information from you that you enter on this form so that we can provide the functions and related services to you and The Campaigner (the organisation responsible for this online action) for their legitimate purposes, including possibly exporting it to other systems, and to effectively respond to enquiries and communications related to those services.

Specifically when you enter:

Your location data (residential address or postcode) it is used to locate your elected representative, to pre-populate your email signature and to provide The Campaigner with a visualisation of the location of the support for this campaign.
All other data you may enter, including your email address, name, telephone number, commentary and so on is used by The Campaigner to advocate for the campaign’s goals and where required may be sent to the target of the campaign.

The data collected by Do Gooder is also used by us in aggregate form to improve the service and may be held on your behalf outside your country of residence by our third party service providers. These providers are bound by contract to only use personal information on our behalf, in accordance with agreed terms. While the privacy laws of the country in which personal information is stored or transferred may be different from those in your country, we will always have safeguards in place when storing or transferring personal information. We will never sell, rent, loan or in any other way pass your information on to other parties other than to provide this service to you and The Campaigner.

The personal information collected by Do Gooder is held subject to a Data Processing Agreement between Do Gooder and The Campaigner in compliance with the EU's GDPR and Australian law.

Learn more about our privacy policy here

How is my data used?