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Outgoing Conservationist's Challenge to Falklands Government By Jenny Cockwell Wildlife charity Falklands Conservation has grown beyond recognition since Becky Ingham joined the organisation. Arriving in the Falklands in August 1996 to work a season as a fisheries observer for the government, she stayed longer than planned and joined Falklands Conservation's three-person team in 1997 as Field Science Officer. Eight years later, having moved up to the position of Director of Falklands Conservation, Becky last week handed over the reins to Grant Munro and leaves the Islands to head back to her native Norfolk next month. Oil Exploration When she joined Falklands Conservation in 1997, the organisation was based in the old classrooms in the Beauchene Complex and had a staff of only two others, Conservation Officer Jeremy Smith and office manager Hay Miller. It was an interesting time for the charity with the looming threat of the first oil exploration which, environmentally, was likely to have a huge impact. At that time, Becky says, there was a lot of tail chasing, "…. because we simply didn't have any environmental data. Companies and the Government were coming to us saying, 'where are the important areas, what are the threats and to what species', and at the time there just wasn't any information to answer any of the questions. So the biggest single threat in those days was the lack of baseline data." Falklands Offshore Sharing Agreement Falklands Conservation became busy with developing proposals to fill these gaps in knowledge and trying to find funding to do that. One of the key ways in which this was done was through the Falklands Offshore Sharing Agreement (FOSA). "They took money from all the companies who were doing exploration work around the Islands and formed an environmental fund. That fund partly paid for albatross work undertaken by Nic Huin, it paid for the Seabirds at Sea project which at that time was Richard White, Andy Black and Keith Gillam and it also paid for New Island penguin tracking. There was an awful lot of work that filled the spaces about seabird distribution and ecology around the Islands." Seabirds at Sea Becky describes those early days as "quite an exciting time". She took over as Conservation Officer when Jeremy Smith left Falklands Conservation in 1999. In the ensuing years one project in particular has made an enormous difference to the future of seabirds in the Falklands - the Seabirds at Sea programme. For the first three years of the project, Becky says, the emphasis was on the gathering of data - "Where are seabirds when they are not at their breeding sites in the Islands, where do they forage, where are the major areas for seabirds in Falklands waters?" This information is now readily available through publications and a database at Falklands Conservation. National Plan of Action When Dr Ben Sullivan joined the charity in 2001, the emphasis of the project changed to examining interaction with the fishing industry. "During 2001 we discovered the interaction with trawlers where seabirds were being killed. I think that work has led to the most significant achievement of the programme which is the production, firstly of the National Plan for fisheries to prevent mortality of seabirds and also the production and use in the fishery of trawling mitigation devices. It has been a really active programme that has led to very positive steps being taken to prevent seabirds dying at sea." Albatross and Petrel Programme Last year, the Seabirds at Sea project moved on further, with the initiation of the Albatross and Petrel Programme, which looks at the Falklands' obligations under the Bonn Convention, which is the Convention for Migratory Species. Becky explains: "Under that Convention is a specific agreement called the Agreement for Conservation of Albatross and Petrels (ACAP) which is specifically aimed at species under significant threat." "In the Falklands those species are the Southern Giant Petrel, Black Browed Albatross and White Chinned Petrel and the programme we've got running at the moment looks to not only carrying on finding out about their ecology and threats to them, but also in protecting them on the land. That means making sure their breeding sites are managed and protected, making sure that fishermen, Falkland Islanders and everyone really is up to speed and educated about the threats to those species and that there are action plans in place to ensure their protection into the future." The importance of acquiring international support cannot be underestimated, Becky says. "There is no point in anything that we do here unless it is being backed up on an international - and certainly a Patagonian shelf - level. From any conservation point of view, working with neighbours in South America has to be a huge priority." Watch Group During Becky's time with Falklands Conservation, the charity has focused on involving young people in their environment, principally through the Watch Group. The group now has 45% of eligibly-aged children within the Islands as members and Becky says, "…. it is a chance to start them off thinking in the right way about long term protection and sustainability." Work needed on Waste Disposal However, there is no room for complacency. While she readily admits that when she first arrived in the Islands Becky was amazed at the level of environmental awareness - "people here live very close to it, whether it's the sea or the Camp or whatever, they are very much involved with the environment" - she says the Islands still fall down in a number of areas, particularly waste and sewage treatment. "The marketing of the Falklands is almost solely based on the environment: the fisheries, wool, organic farming, tourism and future aquaculture. It's not good enough to say that we still have the equivalent of a blue-flag harbour; there are sixty million people living in Britain and we've got two thousand - it's a completely pointless comparison." Environmental Impact Assessments She says correct procedures are also needed for environmental impact assessments. "The really important thing that I think needs to happen is that they need to be carried out independently. At the moment there is a risk of them being done by people within departments - how independent can someone be when they work for government and government has asked them to produce a plan for something that government is going to pay for? It's just not independent." Problems with Wildlife Legislation Becky is also critical of certain aspects of the wildlife legislation that she says are failing people: "In the time that I have spent talking to people about this issue they are not actually addressing people's real issues and concerns - a good example of this is the control and management of birds of prey on farms, or egg collection. People living in Camp have real issues with birds of prey and they really do feel that these birds need to be controlled and managed. And yet the legislation has a blanket approach which isn't flexible enough to work within a practical sense." But is it possible to legislate flexibly? Becky believes so: "There is a licence system so within the legislation there is supposed to be this route through that you can actually get a licence to kill these birds. But in actual fact, it takes so long that people aren't doing it. Quite what the answer is, I don't know. I don't have an easy cure-all, but all we are having at the moment is a strict legislative system that isn't responding quickly enough to people's concerns; therefore people are getting their backs up and taking the matter into their own hands. This means that birds are still being killed, information is not being passed back and farmers feel they can't work with Conservation or Environmental Planning. Something needs to happen but it needs to involve the people on the ground who have the problem." Tourism More positively, Becky feels good progress has been made in a number of areas and she says the involvement of Falklands Conservation in tourism is encouraging. "Things like the production of the Visitor's Guide to the Falkland Islands (by Debbie Summers), the links we now have with the cruise ship industry and the links we have with at least four of five of the key wildlife sites (providing wardens and literature). We now get people who are experienced in the tourism industry actually phoning us up and asking for ideas. I think we have proved that it is something we are not against in any way at all but, again, it is something we would like to see done in a sustainable fashion. I think that will be massively important for the Falklands in the future." Plants of the Falkland Islands Also pleasing, Becky says, is the progress in cataloguing plants of the Falklands. "When I started there was next to nothing known about the plants of the Islands, there wasn't even a good catalogue of pictures. We've now got the herbarium, really good photo databases, the book and atlas that have been published. All of that is held on the Geographic Information System as well so that at any one point you can pull down lists of plants that are in certain areas." Warning against Complacency All this is good news; however Becky warns against complacency and she says conservation in the Falklands faces challenges, particularly from the oil industry, in the future. She explains, "Last time we had the threat of exploration and we had seismic surveys and exploratory drilling. I think what you are going to have in the next ten years is real drilling and that is going to bring huge potential threats. I don't think they are anything that can't be got round but it's going to be the usual story of finance versus the safeguard of the environment." She says the Falkland Islands Government and the oil industry will have to pub, "…. it's money where its mouth is - if it's going to shout about how great this environment is; it's going to have to pay for all of the things to ensure that it is protected throughout oil exploration phases." Mineral Development She also believes challenges lie with mineral development: "Currently there is very much a laid back attitude to this; 'it's only a little trench around Lafonia' has been said to me a few times in the past couple of years. But how long is it before a little trench around Lafonia turns into open cast mining with very real environmental impacts? I would say the oil and minerals industry is one that definitely needs to be strictly controlled in the future; there needs to be a real watch dog, independently reviewing what happens." Funding Becky says that seeking funding will be another challenge Falklands Conservation will face into the future: "The operational level that Falklands Conservation has each month is now a large financial burden, yet the size and resources able to be generated within the Islands remains at a fairly static level." In some ways, she says, Falklands Conservation is well set as it now attracts more funding from the United Kingdom than any other equivalent organisation in the Overseas Territories. "The Foreign and Commonwealth Office grant that we just received for the albatross and petrel programme was the biggest they've ever awarded so that means that they hold what we do in pretty high regard." However, Becky says the organisation still needs core funds and in a community of only two and a half thousand people, "that's very difficult to attract", while she says she is grateful to the Falkland Islands Government for its financial support she also stresses, "… how important it is to keep that support going on into the future". Goodbye and Thanks She pays tribute to the Trustees of Falklands Conservation and the many volunteers who give up their time and effort. "None of the things that have been achieved over the past eight years could have been possible without all of the dedicated volunteers, Trustees and members around the Islands. They are a terrific group of people to have worked with and it has been a pleasure to work with all of them. Thank you to everybody." Jenny Cockwell is Editor of the Penguin News First published in the Penguin News, 1 April 2005, and reproduced by kind permission of the Editor
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