THE SNP Scottish government must deliver on decade-old promises to protect declining marine environments, campaigners have warned.

To fanfare from conservation groups back in 2014, the government announced the creation of designated marine protected areas (MPAs) which would be shielded from “damaging fishing activities.”

But in a letter to acting SNP Net-Zero Secretary Gillian Martin, many of those same organisations have now hit out at a lack of progress since their introduction in 2016.

Groups including the Scottish Wildlife Trust, National Trust for Scotland, RSPB Scotland and the Marine Conservation Society have joined forces to warn that some MPAs are little more than “paper parks” with few protections in practice eight years on — a period, they note, that has seen unprecedented declines in Scotland’s marine wildlife.

Signatory Open Seas noted that “60 per cent of marine protected areas designated in 2014 still have no protections from scallop-dredging and bottom-trawling.”

The letter points out that the West Shetland Shelf MPA has “even less protection now than it did when designated due to the repeal of protections for spawning cod.”

Warning the minister that both the rollout of enforcement of existing MPAs and progress in creating new zones has stalled, the letter adds: “We are concerned that continued delay risks ongoing harm to the marine environment, undermines the trust of coastal communities and leaves many stakeholders, including in the fishing industry, disillusioned and with little certainty.

“We believe that it is now time for priority action to deliver what has been promised.”

A Scottish government spokesperson said: “Putting in place the remaining fisheries management measures required to protect priority marine features and marine protected areas remains a high priority for the Scottish government.”