Dear Friend of Ocean Life,
CENTRAL COAST MOVING FORWARD
We have good news on the progress of MLPA. On April 11, 2005, the MLPA Task Force decided that the geographic boundaries of the "Central Coast Study Area" will be from Pigeon Point (near the Santa Cruz/San Mateo countyline) in the north to Point Conception (near the San Luis Obispo/Santa Barbara countyline) in the south. This area is not an MPA itself, but defines the geographic scope of this first Central Coast phase of MLPA implementation. The state of California is scheduled to adopt a network of MPAs within this area by the end of 2006, and throughout the rest of the state's coast by 2011.
Initial recommendations for MPAs on the Central Coast will be made by a Regional Stakeholder Group. We expect to learn who will be on this group any day now, and we'll let you know who will be representing you. Once the Regional Stakeholder Group is convened, it will get to work on evaluating existing marine protected areas and drawing up new ones. A team of local scientists will assist in these efforts.
More than a dozen of you attended and spoke at the MLPA Task Force meeting in Monterey, and encouraged the Task Force to keep moving forward. As you can see, they are! Thanks for your participation.
HELP NEEDED
If you know of a business or organization that might be willing to sponsor the COOL Marine Reserve petition, please send a reply to this email. We're getting lots of names on those petitions, and could use some help entering them into our database. If you'd be interested in contributing in that way, please send a reply to this email.
Thanks for taking some of your valuable time to protect central coast marine life.
Very Gratefully,
Everyone at COOL.
"The mission of the Coalition of Organizations for Ocean Life is to foster the creation of a network of marine reserves that will help restore, enhance and protect the diversity and abundance of California's marine life and underwater habitats, and to educate the public on the value of marine reserves and healthy oceans."
A partial list of our members and supporting businesses is available here.