Annette Brooke MP Shows Support for Campaign to 'Save the Alabatross'
June 28, 2004 12:00 AM
Local MP supports the Royal Society for the Protection of Bird's campaign to 'Save the Albatross'
Following representations from a local constituent and member of the RSPB, Annette Brooke, Liberal Democrat MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole, recently tabled an Early Day Motion in support of the Royal Society for the Protection of Bird's (RSPB) campaign to 'Save the Albatross', in the House of Commons.
Every year, about 100,000 Albatrosses die as a consequence of long line fishing, particularly in coastal areas of Africa and South America. Longline fishing uses baited hooks attached to lines towed behind fishing vessels. Lines can be 80 miles long and carry as many as 10,000 hooks. As a result, these magnificent birds, one species of which can live for up to half a century, are threatened with extinction.
As well as supporting the RSPB's new campaign, the Early Day Motion does acknowledge the fact that the UK government has ratified the recent Agreement on the Conservation of Albatrossess and Petrels (ACAP) but urges the government to exert pressure on the UK's Overseas Terriotory of Tristan da Cunha.
The failure of Tristan da Cunha to ratify the agreement is significant as the tiny and remote island in the southern Atlantic Ocean is an important area for the conservation of albatrosses, the spectacled petrel, for example, of which the global population of less than 10,000, is only found in Tristan da Cunha.
Annette Brooke MP is a long time member of the RSPB, and her support for their efforts to save the 'sailor's friend' and the petrel, has been welcomed by the RSPB and by conservation and wildlife All Party Parliamentary Groups in Parliament. The EDM has already received support from 42 MPs across all the major parties.
The MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole will write to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to raise this issue with her directly in due course when the Early Day Motion has received even more support, to urge the government to take some action to encourage Tristan da Cunha to sign the international agreement.
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