Environmentalists criticise Australia reef protection plan
Sydney (AFP) - Environmentalists criticised a new Australian government plan released Monday 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. It gave Canberra until February 1, 2015 to submit a report on what it was doing to protect the natural wonder.
Australia's Environment Minister Greg Hunt said Monday the draft 'Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan' was an effort to balance priorities.
"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 plan as positive, including the greater coordination between authorities.
The draft plan also bans future port developments in the Fitzroy Delta, Keppel Bay and North Curtis Island near Rockhampton in Queensland state -- areas of the reef described by environmentalists as key incubators of marine life.
It suggests a 10-year ban on dredging to develop new ports or to expand existing ones both inside and next to the World Heritage site -- apart from in priority port development areas.
But Felicity Wishart from the Australian Marine Conservation Society said it should have recommended laws to minimise dredging as well as ban dumping in marine park waters.
"From our point of view the reef is in dire straits," she told AFP, adding that the plan should have been a "lifeline" to turn the reef around over the next 35 years.
"We feel that essentially it has failed to do that," she said.
The report comes just days after the government said it was reconsidering dumping dredging waste from the Abbot Point port development into the waters of the reef.
Conservationists say that 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.
Wishart welcomed this move but said while the government had shown "good intent" in this regard, the reef needed a strong legislative response to protect it.
She said the 2050 draft plan also failed to protect the Cape York peninsula, in the far north of Queensland state, which is the most pristine section of the reef.
Although a major tourist attraction, the Great Barrier Reef has supported a range of commercial activities for many years while the adjacent catchment area has undergone significant development including land clearing, farming and mining.
The colourful coral faces a number of pressures including climate change, poor water quality from land-based runoff, the crown-of-thorns starfish which eat coral and the impacts of coastal development and fishing.
