Background

In 2021, as part of the Burning Issues 7 (BI-7) process, the MTSG members worked to develop a set of criteria and a framework for defining Important Marine Turtle Areas (IMTAs). IMTAs are discrete areas within existing marine turtle regional management units (RMUs) that are of particular biological significance for the persistence of marine turtles, and/or where the contributions of marine turtles to traditions and cultures of local people are particularly significant.

The IMTA framework is the world’s first global delineation and prioritization of in-water habitats for sea turtles and parallels similar initiatives for seabirds and marine mammals, thus ensuring that biodiversity assessment and prioritization processes are comprehensive and comparable across multiple taxa of marine megafauna.

Goals of IMTAs

The goal of IMTAs is to provide a robust, globally consistent framework to support conservation and management of areas important to marine turtles at multiple scales. Examples of applications of IMTAs at regional or national levels include (but are not limited to):

• Informing designation of marine protected areas or other instruments of conservation policy or legal framework to protect marine turtles or areas where human cultures and marine turtles connect;

• Evaluating the contribution of conservation and management efforts to marine turtle recovery, and;

• Prioritizing additional efforts needed to protect and recover marine turtles in distinct countries and regions.