Seems to me it's the QLD Government that's actually making things happen to protect the GBR!
Just what have those numpties done with their $444 Million Federal Grant so far other that talk about it and put it in a bank to earn interest>?
"The GBR Foundation has been given $444 million by the federal government and is expected to raise matching funds from private donors.The federal opposition had said it would have withdrawn the funding if it won the federal election.Ms Ley said the common ground across all issues was the need for greater co-operation.“The GBR Foundation is about everyone talking to everyone”, she said."
'Dead corals don't make babies': Great Barrier Reef losing its ability to recover from bleaching."Successive ocean heat waves are not only damaging Australia's Great Barrier Reef, they are compromising its ability to recover, raising the risk of "widespread ecological collapse," a new study has found.The 2,300-kilometer-long (1,500 mile) reef has endured multiple large-scale "bleaching" events caused by above-average water temperatures in the last two decades, including back-to-back occurrences in 2016 and 2017.The new study, released Wednesday in the journal Nature, examined the number of adult corals which survived these two events and how many new corals they created to replenish the reef in 2018.
The answer was as bleak as it was stark: "Dead corals don't make babies," the study's lead author, Terry Hughes, said in a press release.Scientists working on the study found the loss in adult corals caused a "crash in coral replenishment" on the reef, as heat stresses brought about by warming ocean temperatures impacted the ability of coral to heal.What warmer oceans mean for the planetWhat warmer oceans mean for the planet"The number of new corals settling on the Great Barrier Reef declined by 89% following the unprecedented loss of adult corals from global warming in 2016 and 2017," said Hughes.Scientists have long warned of the impact on global warming on the reef, the world's largest reef system and the only living organism that can be seen from space. The reef, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, supports thousands of species -- fish, turtles, sharks and marine mammals."
"The study found that one of the most dominant species of coral, Acropora, which provides "most of the three-dimensional coral habitat that support thousands of other species," according to co-author Andrew Baird, had suffered a 93% drop in replenishment following the back-to-back bleaching events of 2016 and 2017."
Bleak future,
" Scientists working on the report say they would expect coral recruitment to recover over the next 5 to 10 years, as more corals reach sexual maturity, but only in the absence of another bleaching event. However, with sea temperatures continuing to rise this seems a near-impossiblity."It's highly unlikely that we could escape a fifth or sixth event in the coming decade," said co-author Morgan Pratchett."We used to think that the Great Barrier Reef was too big to fail -- until now," he said.The recent bleachings follow two previous events, in 1998 and 2002. Scientists predict that the gaps in between bleaching events will only narrow as climate change worsens."Reef resilience is now severely compromised by global warming," said Baird."
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/04/australia/great-barrier-reef-coral-bleaching-intl/index.html
