Antarctic sanctuary: Gillian Anderson to present 300,000 signatures to government
Written by News on 09/10/2018
Actress and oceans campaigner Gillian Anderson has presented a petition signed by more than 300,000 people calling for a huge part of Antarctica to become protected.
The proposed area in the Weddell Sea is seven times the size of the UK and would become the world’s first Antarctic Ocean Sanctuary.
The petition, delivered to the Foreign Office, has been signed by two million people worldwide.
The size of the area makes this the most ambitious of several proposals on a protected marine area to be agreed later this month in Australia by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).
The sanctuary could be as large as 1.11m square miles (1.8m square km) and would be off-limits from human activity.
As well as providing a safe haven for penguins, whales and seals, it would allow wildlife and the ecosystem that supports it to recover from climate change, pollution and over-fishing.
The proposed measure would also preserve a huge carbon sink, a natural system that sucks up and stores carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The Antarctic is one of the oceans’ most important carbon stores.
The plan was given a huge boost in July when the krill fishing industry voluntarily agreed to stop fishing in the areas covered by the proposed marine sanctuary.
Four small vulnerable ecosystems in the Antarctic Ocean have already been designated as protected, following a three-month expedition which found both new species and plastic and hazardous chemicals.
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