A new scientific report says million of tonnes of farm-based and naturally occurring pollutants are flooding Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef each year, choking sea grasses, starving marine life and killing coral.
The reports from the federal government funded Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) has been seized on by the resources industry to claim environmental campaigns relating to the World Heritage listed reef were aimed at ruining the industry.
The AIMS report analysed 10 years of data to show if the massive amount of nutrients, clays and fine silts could be retained before hitting the reef, environmental and farming benefits would result.
It said the report “reinforced the need for improved land management practices in order to prevent unnecessary sediment run-off that is affecting the health of the Great Barrier Reef’’.
The report said the state’s rivers discharge 17 million tonnes of suspended sediments, 80,000 tonnes of nitrogen, and 16,000 tonnes of phosphorus annually to the reef, up to eight times the level compared with pre-European times, strongly suggesting farming and development were responsible. It found flooding also had a dramatic impact on water quality and the discharge from rivers determined water clarity on the reef.
A 2012 report from AIMS found the reef had lost half of its coral in the past 27 years. It said reductions in the sediment and nutrient loads of the Burdekin River would likely result in significantly improved water clarity downstream of the river mouth and across much of the central reef.
“This study shows improved land management practices can result in a win-win outcome,’’ report leader Dr Britta Schaffelke said.
Brisbane’s Courier Mail newspaper reports the resources industry has faced a wave of protest over the development of mega mines, the Curtis Island LNG projects and dredging in Gladstone Harbour, as well as the planned dredging for the expansion of the Abbot Point coal terminal, both of which are within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
T
he global campaigns have successfully shamed banks into refusing to fund resource-related projects in Queensland and the environment movement said its fight with miners would stop things getting any worse.
“This important study adds further weight to our industry’s contention, and that of many scientific experts, that the anti-resources activists are focusing all their energy on the wrong sources of problems for the reef,’’ Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche said.
“We know that they deliberately ignore this evidence because the activists’ concern is not the health of the reef, but rather to shut down our fossil fuel export industries.”
The Courier Mail reports the study did not investigate the impact of mining or port development but the conservative Liberal National Party state government’s Reef Facts website said the pollution sources from areas other than agriculture were minor.
