Australia and South Pacific Marine Protected Areas (Australia and New Caledonia)

In 2022 and 2023, the Wyss Foundation provided a $750,000 grant to Pew Charitable Trusts to support designating new marine protected areas in Australia, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia and to identify opportunities in New Zealand.

On July 1, 2023, the Australian government announced the expansion of Macquarie Island Marine Park to the full extent of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). An EEZ is an area of the ocean generally extending 200 nautical miles beyond a nation’s territorial sea, within which a coastal country has jurisdiction over natural resources. The new park will increase the no‐take portion of the park—closed to all fishing, mining, and other extractive activities—by 385,000 km2, slightly smaller than the landmass of California. The region supports rich marine life, including fifty-seven species of seabirds—twenty-five of which breed on Macquarie Island.

On October 8, 2024, the Australian government announced the expansion of Heard and McDonald Islands Marine Park, which quadrupled the size of the existing park by adding new protections for an area larger than Norway (approximately 308,000 km2). The islands teem with emperor penguins and elephant seals and have the country’s only two active volcanoes but are threatened by growing Patagonian toothfish and mackerel icefish fisheries. This project also supported efforts to finalize management plans to formalize no-take protections for 789,000km2, larger than the landmass of Texas, for the Christmas and Cocos Island Marine Parks.

On October 18, 2023, the government of New Caledonia committed to fully protecting ten percent of its ocean territory by expanding the Coral Sea Natural Park reserves. A few months later on January 1, 2024, the new protections went into effect and increased New Caledonia’s highly protected marine area by 105,104 km2. The newly protected marine areas include critical habitat for sea turtles, whales, sharks, dolphins, and seabirds and important ecosystems including coral reefs, seamounts, and a deep-sea trench.

The project was made possible through the work of Pew Charitable Trusts and the governments of Australia and New Caledonia.