The Scottish Government has once again kicked the can down the road on protecting Scotland’s inshore marine environment for the fourth time in nearly a decade.
On 10 December 2025, Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy Gillian Martin confirmed that a long-promised consultation on fisheries restrictions in inshore marine protected areas will not take place before the May 2026 Holyrood election. This means that meaningful protections first due in 2016 have now been delayed until at least ten years after they were meant to be in force.
These repeated delays are not bureaucratic oversights — they are actively allowing the continued destruction of Scotland’s seabed. Sensitive slow growing habitats such as flame shell beds and maerl, which take centuries to form, are still being torn apart by bottom trawling and dredging inside areas that are supposedly protected.
Most of Scotland’s marine protected areas were designated in 2014, and the Scottish Government is legally required to put in place fishing restrictions to safeguard the wildlife and habitats they were created to protect. The original 2016 deadline was missed, followed by further missed deadlines in 2020 and 2024. As recently as earlier this year, the Government promised an inshore consultation in November — a promise that has now been abandoned.
The cost of this failure is immense. Seabed habitats in coastal marine protected areas are critical spawning and nursery grounds for the fish and shellfish that sustain coastal livelihoods. They lock away carbon, helping to tackle the climate crisis. Inshore marine protected areas are also meant to protect iconic wildlife, including seabirds, whales and basking sharks.
A decade after designation, Scotland’s inshore marine protected areas remain protected in name only. Continued delay is indefensible. Every year without action means more irreversible damage to habitats that Scotland has a legal and moral duty to protect — and more empty promises instead of real leadership on nature and climate.
Tags: Environment, Conservation, Activism
