Environmentalists criticized a new Australian government plan released yesterday to protect the Great Barrier Reef in the face of UN concerns, saying it will not do enough to halt the marine park’s decline.
The draft plan, now open for consultation, comes after UNESCO threatened to put the reef on its World Heritage “in danger” list and gave Canberra until Feb. 1 next year to submit a report on what it was doing to protect the natural wonder.
Australian Minister for the Environment Greg Hunt yesterday said that the draft “Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan” was an effort to balance priorities.
Photo: EPA
“Maintaining and protecting this iconic World Heritage area, while considering the needs for long-term sustainable development, is a critical priority,” Hunt said.
WWF Australia chief executive Dermot O’Gorman said the draft did not set high enough targets for cutting agricultural pollution or provide “the billions of dollars required to restore the health of the reef.”
“At this stage Reef 2050 lacks the suite of bold new actions needed to halt the reef’s decline,” O’Gorman said.
He described some elements of the Reef 2050 plan as positive, including the greater coordination between authorities.
The draft plan also bans any future port developments in the Fitzroy Delta, Keppel Bay and North Curtis Island near Rockhampton in Queensland — some of the least developed areas of the reef described by environmentalists as key incubators of marine life.
The release of the new plan comes just days after the government said it was reconsidering dumping dredging waste from a major port development into the waters of the reef.
Conservationists claim dumping the waste in the marine park would hasten the demise of the reef, with dredging smothering corals and seagrasses, and exposing them to poisons and elevated levels of nutrients.
In related news, three-quarters of the trash found off the nation’s beaches is plastic, a study released yesterday said as it warned that the rubbish is entangling and being swallowed by wildlife.
Researchers surveyed the vast Australian coastline at intervals of about 100km, compiling the world’s largest collection of marine debris data, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said.
“We found about three-quarters of the rubbish along the coast is plastic,” CSIRO scientist Denise Hardesty said. “Most is from Australian sources, not the high seas, with debris concentrated near cities.”
Rubbish found included glass and plastic bottles, cans, bags, balloons, pieces of rubber, metal and fiberglass, as well as fishing gear and other items lost or discarded in or near the sea.
The marine debris not only poses a navigation hazard, but can smother coral reefs, transport invasive species, harm tourism, and kill and injure wildlife, the report said.
It warned that litter impacted wildlife through entanglement and ingestion, but also indirectly via the chemicals it introduces into marine ecosystems.
“Our findings indicate oceanic leatherback turtles and green turtles are at the greatest risk of both lethal and sub-lethal effects from ingested marine debris,” the report said.
Birds eat everything from balloons to string, with the survey finding 43 percent of seabirds had plastic in their gut, with the Tasman Sea between Australia, New Zealand and the Southern Ocean pinpointed as a high risk region.
“Our analyses predict that plastics ingestion in seabirds may reach 95 percent of all species by 2050, given the steady increase of plastics production,” it said.
Entanglement also poses the risk of death or maiming to seabirds, turtles, whales, dolphins, dugongs, fish, crabs, crocodiles and other species.
The report, part of a three-year marine debris research and education program developed by Earthwatch Australia with CSIRO and energy group Shell, found that there were two main drivers of the pollution — littering and illegal dumping.
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