As part of our Journey to Marseille, a series of online events leading up to the IUCN World Conservation Congress in 2021, IUCN and its partners are pleased to announce this new event.

The webinar aims at giving stage to practitioners to share good practices and facilitate dialogue on the role the European Overseas play and the challenges they face in conservation.

The silent world? Ecoacoustic monitoring applied to marine biodiversity conservation

The event will offer a presentation of two initiatives who have developped ecoacoustic techniques for marine biodiversity conservation. By gathering 2 practitioners this discussion will focus on sharing and exchanging on each other’s experience to replicate solutions,as well as to present opportunities and barriers of such approaches.

• With their tree-like morphologies, the Black Coral communities can form real underwater forests modifying the underwater environment and influencing other species distribution. Due to the depth at which black corals usually thrive in Macaronesia, they are poorly understood with no data about their spatial extension, ecosystem functions and services. Launched in 2020, B-CHARMED aims at developping new acoustic methodologies enabling the characterization and mapping of these underwater forests and its associated biodiversity, using the island of Lanzarote, in the Canary Archipelago, as a case-study site.
• The coral reef around Europa island is one of the world’s rare reefs that remain in a near pristine condition. Its conservation is both a priority and a logistic challenge due to its remoteness. The frequency of visual surveys (a snapshot every 3 to 5 years) is insufficient to support its effective management. The CORCOPA project installed an autonomous acoustic monitoring station at 12 m depth in April 2018. A hydrophone continuously records the soundscape. Data are transmitted to a terrestrial station, providing a near real-time information about the state and functioning of the ecosystem.

Speakers:

• Carole Martinez, IUCN BEST Programme Coordinator, IUCN Global Protected Areas Programme
• Aissa Traore, PANORAMA Programme officer, Global Protected Areas Programme
• Simon Elise, PhD, University of La Réunion
• Francisco Otero Ferrer, PhD, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
• David Obura, PhD, Director, CORDIO East Africa

Tune in with the Zoom Webinar link here.

About BEST

The BEST Initiative seeks to promote the conservation of biodiversity and the sustainable use of ecosystem services, including ecosystem-based approaches to climate change adaptation and mitigation, in the EU Outermost Regions and Overseas Countries and Territories. BEST aims to do so via the empowerment of local stakeholders through the implementation of a grant scheme accompanied by capacity building measures.

Links

• B-CHARMED: https://b-charmed.eu/en/
• CORCOPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK0sR7e4F0Y