… or at least that seems to be what Australia’s Opposition leader thinks would happen if he stopped the expansion of marine protected areas in Australian waters:
In a policy aimed at marginal Queensland seats, Mr Abbott said a Coalition government would ”immediately suspend the marine protection process which is threatening [...]
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority released it’s Outlook Report 2009 today (direct link to PDF’s here). The report is a independently peer reviewed assessement of the impacts of climate change, catchment runoff, fishing, coastal development and an array of other impacts on the reef. Alongside the [...]
ABC News, 10th August 2009 – An international study has found that the economic cost of coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef would be $37.7 billion.
The Oxford Economics report, which values the reef at $51.4 billion, also found up to 50 per cent of tourists who would normally visit the [...]
Good to see the honorable Kevin Rudd has “…decided to kick off my blogging career with a focus on climate change“:
The latest scientific research on climate change confirms our worst fears. Climate change is happening faster than we previously thought, creating a more serious threat to our economy, [...]
In a major step to protecting the inshore reefs of the GBR, the Queensland Government have inacted fairly dramatic legislation on the use of fertilisers and pesticides on farms in the reef catchment. Under the new rules, farmers in the Mackay-Whitsunday, Burdekin Dry Tropics and Far North’s Wet Tropic catchments must keep [...]
I thought this was well worth posting – a comprehensive ‘who, how, what and why’ answer session by the government that neatly answers most common concerns over the new reef protection amendment.
Question – Who and where will the Great Barrier Reef Protection Amendment Bill 2009 affect? When will regulation and Bill commence and come into effect?
Conservationists are anticipating a victory in their long running battle with farmers over the effects of runoffs from pesticides and fertilisers on the Great Barrier Reef. Legislation has been introduced into the Queensland Parliament that would restrict farmers’ use of the chemicals. Failure to comply could trigger a $30,000 fine. But farmers say there’s no proven links to coral bleaching and infestations of the crown of thorns starfish, and it’s just part of Green preference deals.
A recent article in the ABC news tells of the seasonal dynamics of ‘black band disease’ affecting plating corals on the inshore great barrier reef. Yui Sato, the lead author of the journal article painstakingly documented 485 coral colonies across an almost 3 year time period. Interestingly, the results seem to point as light as [...]
The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has ‘changed tack‘ from his post election promises last year in which he said that ‘failure to act on climate change could be disastrous’, and that delaying emission reductions would be “reckless and irresponsible”. Due to the global recession (and presumably other factors), local emissions trading is [...]
Our lab has just published a new paper in PLoS ONE, detailing the interactions of coral and algae on the Great Barrier Reef, and uncovered just how resilient some reefs can be following coral bleaching events. The southern end of the Great Barrier Reef was exposed to extended periods of [...]
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