Great Barrier Reef: Australia pledges $60m to halt decline

Australia’s government has approved a multi-million dollar package to restore some of the damage done to the Great Barrier Reef.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said he hoped the AUS$60m (£34.5m) project for the world’s largest coral reef would “protect it for decades to come”.

The 1,400-mile reef system off the coast of Queensland is considered one of the world’s greatest natural wonders, but onslaughts by coral-eating starfish and bleaching caused by a rise in sea temperatures have inflicted serious damage.

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Last week, the head of the UN’s environmental programme warned that “greenhouse gas emissions, plastic pollution and impacts from agriculture” had pushed the world’s reef systems to “make or break point”, The Guardian reports.

Unveiling the plans in Townsville, Turnbull said that while the reef was facing “increasing threats”, the ecosystem remained “vibrant” and “resilient”.

The largest share of the money, around AUS$36 (£20.7m), will go towards keeping polluted water away from the reef, minimising run-off pollution and encouraging farmers to plant vegetation along the coastline near the reef to reduce soil erosion.

Another $6m (£3.5m) will support scientific research investigating how to make the coral more resilient.

However, critics have accused the government of ignoring expert reports which found that many of the measures were ineffective.

Green party senator Andrew Bartlett said that the plans were a publicity-grabbing distraction from the real threat of industrial pollution, the ABC reports.

“If Malcolm Turnbull was serious about protecting the Great Barrier Reef he would listen to scientists and transition away from the real reef-killer, the fossil fuel industry,” he said.

The package includes AUS$10.4m (£6m) to increase the number of culling vessels targeting a coral-eating species of starfish, “despite researchers employed to evaluate the program repeatedly finding it to have failed, and potentially having made the problem worse,” says The Guardian’s Michael Slezak.

A spokeswoman from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority told the paper that improvements had been made to increase the effectiveness of the culling programme.

Another project in the pipeline proposes to reduce the risk of coral bleaching by using giant fans to cool the water prevent bleaching, a venture that a panel of experts decried as “a major departure from reality”.