On 2nd October 2013 the European commission will ultimately decide whether the gas terminal to be built in the Italian waters of the Gulf of Trieste, just near the border with Slovenia, will be listed on the EU priority list of energy projects of common interests. In July, Slovenia has rejected the list due to this project, claiming that it is disputable for several reasons, among which cross-border environmental issues are essential. The terminal would severely threaten the fragile marine ecosystem of the shallow Gulf of Trieste.
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On the “Mediterranean coast day” (25. September) the Slovenian Ministry for agriculture and the environment will celebrate the anniversary of ratification of the Protocol on Integrated Coastal Zone Management in the Mediterranean, first signed by Slovenia in 2009.
The Ministry of agriculture and the environment has recently organized two workshops about development of sustainable marine fisheries and aquaculture in Slovenia. The workshops were held on 30th August and 2nd September in Izola and Ljubljana, Slovenia.
One of the factors of threat, that birds are nowadays facing, is also sea pollution. Due to leakage of oil and its derivatives, inappropriate handling of fuel as well as in cases of accidents at sea comes to the formation of oil slicks. Bird feathers can become oiled and thus reduces bird’s ability to fly away while birds can also be poisoned as they try to clean the oil from their feathers. Thankfully, to this problem is now devoting a lot of attention and experiences, how to act and help oiled birds are already known. One such organization that has as its mission solving such problems is, beside REMPEC, Sea Alarm Foundation and ISPRA, also the French organization CEDRE. From 21st to 23rd of May 2013 I had an opportunity to attend an international workshop in the frame of POSOW project focused on oiled wildlife response, shoreline cleanup and volunteer training.
On 19th April 2013 the Slovenian government declared a complemented Natura 2000 network which now includes the first marine sites in Slovenia with the Mediterranean shag as a qualifying species. The sites contain all three shags’ communal roosting sites on the buoys of maricultures and their nearest surroundings. They are situated in the bay of St. Bartholomew (SI5000028 Debeli rtič), the Strunjan bay (SI5000031 Strunjan) and the Piran bay (SI5000018 Sečoveljske soline).
BirdLife International submitted a joint position of 26 NGOs on the EU proposal for Directive on maritime spatial planning and integrated coastal management (MSF-ICM Directive).
They emphasize that the Directive should put environment at its heart. They warn that unless the decisions based on the Directive are made to ensure health of the environment and on the precautionary principle, the EU’s ’Blue Growth’ agenda will never be sustainable. In care of sea birds and entire marine environment in Slovenia and broader DOPPS – BirdLife Slovenia joins this common position.
Today, for the first time, the EU Fisheries Council discussed the EU Action Plan for reducing incidental catches of seabirds in EU fishing gears, which was proposed by the Commission in November 2012. The proposal of the action plan is a result of over a decade of efforts of BirdLife International and it represents a robust strategy to protect seabirds directly threatened by fisheries. Both, the Irish presidency and the MARE Commissioner, Maria Damanaki, expressed their strong support for the action plan today.
The port of Capodistria, Slovenia, is just hosting the Greenpeace ice-breaker Arctic Sunrise on her tour accross coastal seas of European union. She is sailing to support small-scale coastal fisheries and to point at damaging effects of the current Common Fisheries Policy that mainly supports unsustainable industrial fisheries with strong negative effect on fish stocks and marine ecosystems in general.
A telemetry workshop was held last weekend in the village of Wierzba in the north of Poland (Warmian-Masurian County), organized by the Polish company ECOTONE, one of the leading developers and producers of telemetry devices for wild animals, especially GPS loggers for birds. The workshop was attended also by two DOPPS – BirdLife Slovenia representatives, Katarina Denac and Urša Koce, to deepen our knowledge about telemetry which we implement on the Mediterranean Shag in the project SIMARINE-NATURA.
You are kindly invited to a presentation Birds summer at Slovenian sea as well which will be hold on 11th April 2013 in the Slovenian Natural History Museum in Ljubljana. At the presentation, which is a part of cycle Blue planet, we will introduce the Mediterranean Shag and the role of Slovenian sea and the project SIMARINE-NATURA for its conservation. Click here for more information. The presentation will be in Slovenian language but English discussion with project coordinator is possible.