Save the harbour porpoises: alliance for the protection of the North Sea founded
Several Sylt nature conservation associations and other organisations and research institutions have launched a new alliance dedicated to the protection of the North Sea and its harbour porpoises.
The North Sea Protection Network (NeNo) has set itself the goal of protecting the harbour porpoises off Sylt and Amrum and preserving the North Sea as an intact habitat. This was explained by Charlie Esser, spokesperson for NeNo and nature conservation ambassador for Sylt’s nature conservation organisations.
The participating organisations include the Society for the Rescue of Dolphins (GRD) from Munich, the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) from Bremen, the Schleswig-Holstein Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU SH), the Sylt Nature Conservation Association and Sölring Foriining on Sylt, the "Öömrang Ferian" association for culture and nature conservation on Amrum, the Wadden Sea Protection Station, the Jordsand association from Ahrensburg (Stormarn district) and the WWF Wadden Sea Office in Husum.
The alliance points out that fishing, shipping traffic, plastic waste and noise from offshore wind turbines place considerable pressure on the North Sea. "The North Sea urgently needs better protection - especially for the native harbour porpoises, whose populations have been declining for two decades," explained the network. The harbour porpoises illustrate the extent to which biodiversity in the North Sea is under pressure and how necessary increased protection measures are.
The NeNo alliance emerged from a collaboration initiated two years ago between various associations concerned with the situation of harbour porpoises in the North Sea. As part of this co-operation, a joint "Position paper on the need for increased measures to protect harbour porpoises in the whale sanctuary off Sylt and Amrum" was drawn up. This document was presented to Schleswig-Holstein’s Environment Minister Tobias Goldschmidt (Green Party) in February.
Sample image: medienmacher.eu/ KI-generiert
