Middlebury Institute of International Studies presents a free lecture by Meaghan Brosnan entitled A BLUEprint for Marine Resource Protection on October 30, 6pm-7:30pm in the McGowan Building, Room 102, on the campus of MIIS.

Over the last 40 years, marine life populations have decreased by nearly 50%. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are an increasingly common management approach used to address the precipitous decline of the ocean’s health and resources.

When done right, MPAs are extremely effective, sometimes quadrupling fish biomass in a decade. Strong management and enforcement, however, are key; too often MPAs are established on paper only, without the protections necessary to effect real change. WildAid’s BLUEprint for MPA Success responds to this threat by helping governments make marine enforcement effective and affordable. In this lecture, WildAid’s Marine Program Director, Meaghan Brosnan will describe the BLUEprint approach using case studies from places like the Galapagos and Raja Ampat, Indonesia, and its replicable framework.

As WildAid’s Marine Program Director, Meaghan Brosnan oversees all aspects of WildAid’s Marine Protection work, including ongoing projects in Ecuador, Palau, Malaysia, and Gabon. Meaghan has worked for nearly 15 years to reduce illegal fishing activity around the world, and is an expert in domestic and international fisheries management, compliance, and enforcement. She spent four years at-sea enforcing fisheries law, and served as the deputy chief of the Coast Guard’s Living Marine Resources Enforcement program. Meaghan was also the lead manager of the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Ending Illegal Fishing Campaign, and later founded Exulans, Inc., a global consultancy providing compliance and enforcement solutions for ocean conservation to governments, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations. In these roles, Meaghan has worked in collaboration with senior government leaders and diverse public and private sector organizations in East Africa, Southeast Asia, the Western and Central Pacific, Central America and the United States.