Australian Government is proposing to invest 379 million USD (500 Million Australian Dollars) to protect Great Barrier Reef.
The investment will assist in taking care of various threats and issues like agricultural runoff, mass bleaching, and loss of biodiversity. To this, few critics think that the investment can go to earlier strategies, which have shown limited success.
Environment and Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg, on April 29 wrote in an op-ed, “This represents the single biggest investment for reef management and conservation in the history of Australia.”
The Great Barrier Reef in Australian is the world’s biggest coral reef system which is stretching over 1,400 Miles (2,300 Kms) and covering a region bigger than Switzerland, Holland and the UK together. It is a home of diverse sort of corals, mollusks, sharks, jelly fish, rays, whales, dolphins and other fish.
In recent times, due to warming water triggered by change in climate as a result of mass bleaching, the reef has been under constant serious threat. The reef is also badly influenced with agricultural runoff and facing an attack from crown of thorns starfish, which is a natural destroyer of coral leading to huge non-replaced loss of corals.
Jon Brodie, James Cook University Australia, Professorial fellow at ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, said, “The funding of 500 million Australian Dollars announced by Australian Government is good news for Great Barrier Reef. It represents a significant commitment for preserving the reef which is something that has been fall behind in recent years.”
The invested funding will be utilized to tackle few threats mentioned earlier. As per Government of Australia, the fund will help restoring the water quality by improved agriculture practice and fertilizer management.
Additionally, it will help in taking care of crown of thorns starfish attack, to continuously screen the reef’s health, for research on coral adaptation and resilience and to engage communities in citizen science.
Australian Academy of science tweeted, the government need to find out the primary reason of the problem which are warming water and change of climate to protect the reef.
