In keeping with our philosophy or Working in Partnership with Nature we have formed a working partnership with the Species Recovery Trust, please check out their website, this is a brilliant link for us as we have done with others in our Seahorse Alliance and with organisations like PTES
http://www.speciesrecoverytrust.org.uk/The%20Species.html
Dear all, please find an article in the latest issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine about the online petition you all made so successful. This is the fourth month in a row we have been in the magazine.
Dear all, just to let you know trust friend and author Charlie Elder has his new book Few and Far Between coming out next month. Charlie spent some fun and frustrating times with us trying to see Spiny Seahorses at Studland Bay and I am pleased to say in the end we achieved it.
http://www.charlieelder.com/books.html
Dear all, with Agent K and volunteers working for our illegal trade team we can now reveal that we, in cooperation with the Wildlife Crime Unit (WCU) from Devon and Cornwall Police have just stopped a shop in Brixham, Devon from selling dead seahorses. After a tip-off from one of our amazing volunteers, we reported to the WCU that this Shop in Brixham was selling dried, dead seahorses. The WCU reacted very quickly and raided the shop, recovering 10,000 plus dead seahorses, sea moths, a shark, shark bits, a crocodile, coral and a number of other species.
We then acted as the experts with others to identify the seahorses and others species and last week it went to court. The outcome was partially successful in that the shop owner was cautioned and the CITES-listed species (all the seahorses) were confiscated. Sadly the shop owner was not fined or jailed and he kept the non-CITES species but we truly hope this is a wake-up call for him and others in this trade.
There are so many shops (including others in Brixham that we are watching) that participate in this horrendous trade and we are launching our Stop the Curio Trade Campaign soon to try and stop this trade and educate others about it.
All around our coastline and inland are shops selling a wide variety of curios (marine and terrestrial) which the public think are legal to buy because they are on sale, when in fact like the seahorses they are illegal to sell and buy.
We would like to thank the officers involved in the WCU (who we will not name for obvious reasons) especially for their incredibly quick response. All of this at a time when the WCU is being closed down and/or restricted to one officer for the whole of the Devon and Cornwall area, which is shocking. Wildlife Crime here in the South West and the rest of the country is rising rapidly and I encourage you to write to the Chief Constable of Devon and Cornwall Police and ask him to change his mind over this.
After our success with E-bay and now this prosecution please keep an eye out for our Stop the Curio Trade coming in the next few months and thank you so much to everyone involved.
Thank you so much to Alice from Little Alice Crafts who has just made a donation of £26 to the trust and its work and thank you to you all who bought some of her amazing craft work. Alice’s work is extremely beautiful and so intricately made THANK YOU
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/LittleAliceCrafts
Please vote for us
We have been short listed for funding our project at Studland Bay in Dorset by the European Outdoor Conservation Association but it needs your vote to make it happen. Please could you vote for us so that we can get funding to continue with our important research and education work with the seahorses of Studland Bay, there has never been a more important time to do this
Please click on this link and scroll down the page and then vote for our project. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT
http://www.outdoorconservation.eu/project-voting-category.cfm?catid=5
Marc Roberts and his friends are putting on a concert for The Seahorse Trust in April, please support this amazing gig, thank you.
Plaese support our petition to persuade DEFRA to reverse their decision not to include Studland bay into the Marine Conservation Zone process.
Since the petition started we have attracted over 50,000 signatures and now the Wildlife trusts have offered to Tweet it out to their 600,000 members.
You can sign the petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/208/992/778/reverse-the-decision-on-the-studland-bay-mcz/
Or you can access it through our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/106564446031865/
There has never been a time more urgent in the conservation of Studland Bay; yet another year has gone by and the seahorses have all but disappeared and now the tragic news by the government that the site has been dropped from this tranche of the Marine Conservation Zone process. We have to fight and get this decision reversed and we will do everything in our power to get this done, so please support us through GoFundMe and please sign our petition on our Facebook page. Thank you on behalf of the seahorses who only have us as their voice.
Studland Bay in Dorset is the most important sites for Spiny Seahorses in the UK and yet it has been dropped from the Marine Conservation Zone process for the second time, depsite the seahorses being threatened on the site and their numbers dropping from 40 in 2008 to 1 in 2014. Even though they are legally protected !!
The Spiny Seahorses at Studland are under threat from the loss of their home, the seagrass bed because of unmanaged yachts and boats dropping anchors on the site destroying the seagrass and because of illegal moorings being put into the seagrass. The very seagrass that is home not only to the Spiny Seahorses but also a myriad of other rare and endangered species. It also helps to defend the beach and clifss by diffusing wave action, something that will cost the council millions to do if it were not there. The beach is already losing its sands and the cliffs had a number of rock falls last winter.
We have aksed for Environmentally friendly Moorings to be installed so the boats can still visit the area and the seagrass will be protected but DEFRA has dropped the formation of the MCZ because a small handful of yacht owners made an objection, even though they have no scientific evidnce to support their views, depsite the fact the seahorses (and the seagrass because of the seahorses) are legally protected. We want to raise £5,000 to fight this unjust decision and to get the bay back onto the proposed Marine Conservation Zone list. Please donate to the cause so we can lobby government and all the relevant authorities. This urgent we do not have long to achieve this, so please dig deep to help us to help them. Thank you
After pressure from a very small handful of yacht owners, DEFRA has capitulated and dropped Studland Bay from becoming a Marine Conservation Zone in this tranche of the process. This could not come at the worst time when the seahorses have dropped from 40 animals in 2008 to 1 in 2014 and the seagrass is fragmenting to a point where the sand on the beach is disappearing and the cliffs are starting to crumble.
Seagrass is natures defense against this type of erosion and as the seagrass deteriorates it will mean the council and government will have to spend tens of millions of pounds to build ugly sea defenses, ruining this area of beauty and why? because a small handful of yacht owners might have to pay to moor up to environmentally friendly moorings rather than drop their anchors into the seagrass and rip it apart. These sea defenses would not be needed if the seagrass which is natures natural defense system is protected and allowed to do its job for free.
These few yacht vocal owners, unlike the vast majority of responsible yacht owners, do not care about the environment and base their arguments on spurious claims which have no basis in science and yet The Seahorse Trust and Southampton Universities National Oceanography Centre have studied this site for years and through peer-reviewed research have proven that the site is degrading and the seahorses have disappeared
Where has all the sand gone. This picture was taken this winter only a few weeks ago by Kim Maidment and it shows the black line on the gabions where the sand used to be but it is now gione and bits of the surrounding cliff are dropping as they did last winter and why, because the seagrass is fragmenting and there is nothing to diffuse wave action to stop this from happening.
Please sign the petition below to get DEFRA to reverse the decision and to ask them not to put shaky economic arguments in front of their legally binding obligation to protect the seahorses and the seagrass.
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