Danger grading for reef isn’t doom and gloom
Whether natural or cultural, World Heritage Areas are pretty special. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) considers them an outstanding value to humanity that should be ‘protected for future generations to appreciate and enjoy’.
Australia has twenty World Heritage Areas, some, like the prison sites in Tasmania and Fremantle, and the Sydney Opera House, can be maintained by specialists, while others, like Uluru, require a more sympathetic and respectful custodianship.
While hordes of visitors once clambered up and down the sacred, spiritual site, the focus is now on appreciation of the majesty of our iconic red centre from ground level.
Seven of Australia’s Heritage Sites are in Queensland, and include different sections of the Gondwana rainforests, then there’s Riversleigh; where you’ll find the best collection of fossilised mammals, K’gari (Fraser Island), and the Wet Tropics.
But our biggest, most impressive entry is of course, the Great Barrier Reef, which after enduring two major bleaching events in 1998 and 2002, followed by further events in 2016 and 2017; was considered by UNESCO, back then, as in need of being placed on the ‘In Danger’ list.
The then Government lobbied for this not to happen, while brandishing lumps of coal in parliament, an integral aspect of their climate change denial.
They did the same thing again after the next major bleaching event
in 2020, with the then Minister Sussan Ley organising a snorkelling trip to Agincourt Reef for ambassadors of nine voting nations to convince UNESCO to rethink the ‘In Danger’ status.
The question is, why? Who exactly are they fooling?
While nobody wants to be the custodian of a site that scores this status, there is UNESCO funding available to help mitigate or manage the situation, and with tourism operators fearing people wouldn’t come if they knew the truth about the reef, the consensus appeared to be to deny there was any problem at all.
Farmers got pretty vocal too, refuting fertiliser runoff was to blame
for issues with the reef, but the facts were documented as far back as 2012, that inorganic nitrogen runoff was linked to algal blooms, which are a food source for young Crown of Thorns starfish, one of the reef’s most damaging predators.
Just last week, Burdekin Growers who signed up for the five-year NQ Dry Tropics Sustainable Agriculture Program not only reduced their fertiliser use, which had almost doubled in price, but diverted 22,000kgs of inorganic nitrogen from our waterways.
The worst bleaching occurred in 2020 and 2022, and with 90 percent, yes, 90 percent now affected, the worst is from Port Douglas to
Mackay, with Townsville slap-bang in the centre.
The argument to resist putting the GBR on the Endangered list continues, with the new Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek arguing that with vastly reduced emission targets in place, 43 percent by 2030 compared to the previous government’s 26 to 28 percent, Australia is now actively moving to combat the situation.
Whatever the status, ‘endangered’ doesn’t have to mean the end of tourism.
Zoos around the globe rely on visitors wanting to see endangered animals, surely, the same applies to marine life?