Safeguarding Our Heritage

The Fair Isle marine resource: A community proposal for its sustainable management

Introduction

Ten years ago, the Island community, concerned at steady and unremitting damage to the marine environment around Fair Isle, voted unanimously for steps to be taken to remedy the situation. The sea around our small Isle has always played a large part in community life, and continues to do so. Therefore it is not surprising that the community and its partners, the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) and the Fair Isle Bird Observatory Trust (FIBOT) - perceiving no action from other bodies - have taken the lead themselves.

The Fair Isle Marine Environment and Tourism Initiative (summarised in Appendix 3), a Rural Challenge project grant-aided by the Scottish Office with matching funding from the National Trust for Scotland, was set up in 1995 to study the position and recommend action. It led to the formation of the Fair Isle Marine Partnership The two bodies are separate entities. While FIMETI continues to comprise the Fair Isle community, FIBOT and the NTS, the Fair Isle Marine Partnership is broader, establishing a forum for all interested parties and users of the Fair Isle marine resource. The aim of FIMETI, and this presentation, is to provide a catalyst for urgent progress towards proper, sustainable management of the Fair Isle marine resource which is so important to our community. This report expresses the many issues of concern to the community as well as drawing attention to the many assets represented within the Fair Isle marine environment. In this way, FIMETI is able to inform the Fair Isle Marine Partnership, to which it looks to implement the results through discussion and consensus - to the long-term benefit of users and the marine environment itself.

It is increasingly accepted that environmental conservation management cannot succeed without knowledge and application of ecological principles. Ecology requires an understanding of how the individual parts interact and how these are linked, dependent on or benefit through associations often referred to as communities. There has, however, been a tendency to exclude the notion of humans as an integral part of a natural community, their role being more often viewed as negative or destructive.

The term "community" is also applied to human social groups, particularly when these can be well defined. The mere fact that Fair Isle is an island distant from other land and other human settlement helps define the island population as a community, and this definition is enhanced by a high level of shared social, economic and decision-making activities.

Fair Isle is famed for its birds. Indeed, over half the island, including the Hill and entire coastline plays host to nationally and internationally important seabird populations which has prompted the designation of a Special Protection Area in response to the EC’s Wild Birds Directive. This land-only designation may not have gone far enough. In Managing the sea for birds - Fair Isle and adjacent waters, Riddiford & Thompson (1997) argued in favour of extending positive management for the benefit of these seabird populations to include Fair Isle seas.

Positive management of the marine area will not just be beneficial to birds. It is important not to overlook the importance and urgent need for sympathetic management of the Fair Isle marine resource and the benefits which would accrue, at a number of levels and from the marine ecosystem to the island’s human population.

Send mail to dave.wheeler@fairisle.org.uk with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 1999 Fair Isle Marine, Environment & Tourism Initiative
Last modified: February 05, 2002