Ste Anne marine park management plan under review |04 March 2021

An overview of the Ste Anne Marine National Park (Photo credit: SNPA)

• Public asked to submit comments by March 7

Members of the public are being called upon to review the draft management plan for the Ste Anne Marine National Park (MNP) and to email their comments and feedback by March 7, 2021.

Due to Covid-19 and the associated restrictions on public gatherings, this process of public review replaces the usual public meeting. Adverts have been placed in newspapers and on television to inform people on that process.

The intent of this plan is to guide the wise management of the Ste Anne MNP to ensure it achieves its purpose of “protecting and maintaining the natural resources of the park in their natural state for the benefit and enjoyment of the people of Seychelles and visitors alike, while providing opportunities to make sustainable use of the area for stakeholder income generation, tourism, education, recreation, scientific purposes, and financing of the park’s management”.

The Convention on Biological Diversity notes: “Well-governed and effectively managed Protected Areas are a proven method for safeguarding both habitats and populations of species and for delivering important ecosystem services.”

The main current uses of the park are tourism, and to a lesser extent, education and conservation of species and habitats found within the MNP.

Ste Anne MNP is a highly visited park receiving around 20,000 paying visitors per year (in the 5 years 2015-2019 the park received between 17,100 and 22,500 paying visitors per year). These figures are underestimates of park use as the park is a very popular weekend and public holiday destination for Seychellois who do not pay to visit the MNP and whose numbers are not recorded accurately. The MNP has high socio-economic benefit for local tourism operators.

Ste Anne MNP is unique in Seychelles in that all the land (6 smallish islands) within the MNP is privately owned (Cerf and Moyenne islands) or leased (the other islands) and there is a significant human population residing within the MNP.

Ste Anne Island has a large 300+ room hotel, currently managed/leased by Club Med, Cerf Island has c.20 private resident households, 2 medium-sized hotels and several smaller guesthouses; Round Island has 1 medium sized hotel and Long Island has a partially constructed and currently abandoned larger hotel.

Moyenne Island is a privately owned and managed by Terrestrial National Park managed by the Moyenne Foundation Society.

Although outside the remit of this management plan, as it is on land, the site has significant historical and cultural heritage value. Ste Anne Island was the site of the first settlement in Seychelles in 1770. The island has since been used as a whaling station in the early 1900s, a Royal Marines Base during World War II, and a state-run Boarding School (National Youth Service) in the 1980s.

The National Prison used to be on Long Island and Round Island was used as a Leprosarium.

Below are some extracts of the document of the different issues regarding the Ste Anne Marine Park.

Conservation values

The conservation values of the Ste Anne MNP are:

• Sea turtle feeding and breeding grounds (hawksbill and green);
• Seagrass beds (nursery and feeding habitat for herbivorous fish and green turtles, carbon sink and sand and silt trap);
• Sharks and Rays (lemon shark nursery, juvenile blacktip reef shark refuge, high spotted eagle ray, porcupine ray and cowtail stingray densities);
• Coral reefs;
• No take zone where fish can reproduce and grow without fishing pressure (supposedly) which supports fish stocks outside the park via spill-over.

Sections 3 to 8 of this document highlight the main values of the habitat, species, processes, goods and services, identify the main issues threatening these values, and propose strategies to mitigate the issues. The management actions (activities) proposed to achieve these strategies are detailed in Section 9 (the Performance Measurement System) and Section 10 (the Costed Plan of Implementation).

Management issues

• Currently insufficient buoys demarcating the MNP boundaries;
• Currently insufficient mooring buoys – exacerbating the problem of anchors being dropped on reefs and damaging corals;
• Regular targeted poaching of especially reef fish using fish traps (subjected to considerable fish trap fishing pressure), rays (spearing), sharks (handline, mostly juvenile lemon sharks), and to a lesser extent lobster, octopus, and turtles (during nesting season) inside the MNP;
• Park management have no base within the MNP;
• Lack of SNPA staff capacity and staff retention;
• Speedboats and jet skis speeding dangerously within the MNP;
• Littering and inappropriate behaviour (e.g., excessive noise) by beach picnickers;
• Lack of management capacity to enforce park regulations;
• Unsustainable tourism (unregulated numbers, lack of education and awareness of visitors regarding the damage they can cause to park biodiversity by, for example, dropping anchor on coral reef, standing on corals, feeding fish etc);
• Lack of community involvement in decision-making process.
• Coastal development within and adjacent to the MNP which causes pollution and run-off (organic, solid, sewage) contributing to eutrophication, siltation, coastal erosion etc;
• Climate change (rising sea-level and sea surface temperatures leading to coral bleaching and death, and to coastal erosion).

Other threats to the MNP that are largely or entirely outside the control of park management

Management goals

• To install and maintain sufficient demarcation and mooring buoys to demarcate MNP boundary and to minimise dropping of anchors on sensitive areas of the MNP;
• To eliminate poaching (illegal fishing) within the MNP;
• To ensure sufficient revenue is collected to support/enable the implementation of this management plan;
• To investigate co-management or as a minimum increase stakeholder input into management decisions;
• To improve dialogue and relations between park management and stakeholders;
• To have 24/7 park ranger presence within the MNP;
• To promote and ensure a sustainable, low footprint, educational, inspirational and enjoyable experience for park visitors;
• To maintain and enhance park conservation values and mitigate negative impacts;
• To undertake a minimum level of monitoring of park core conservation values to enable assessment of park management effectiveness, and to inform management decisions/actions;
• To ensure the MNP has the appropriate quality and quantity of staff to fully implement this plan;
• To review park regulations and update as necessary regarding penalties for infringements on speeding, illegal fishing etc, and to clarify, for example, what exactly ‘reckless or dangerous driving’ means, e.g., include a speed limit, to make regulations (i) less open to subjective interpretation (ii) more of a deterrent and (iii) more in line with management plan zoning.

The 81-page document can be downloaded from the Seychelles National Parks Authority website – www.snpa.gov.sc or alternatively call or text on 2560841 or email rachelbristol@seychelles.net to request a digital copy. A hard copy is also available for viewing at the Mont Fleuri DA’s Office during working hours.

Compiled by Vidya Gappy