Politics is
something that I am rarely, if ever, interested in, though watching the ABC
news this evening was a rare change. The federal government is proposing the establishment
of the world’s largest network of marine parks – the size of India - protecting
endangered reef ecosystems and, in particular, the rapidly-vanishing Great
Barrier Reef. Nationwide costs are expected to be in the hundreds of millions,
as the government will be buying out businesses affected by the plans. State
governments are still analysing the plans before they make their positions
clear.
The proposed network of national reserves within the ocean
As you might
expect from an ecology student, I have absolute support for this project. I am
quite impressed that Australia will be a world leader in marine conservation –
something that we are usually pretty ordinary at as a nation. The network will
extend protection in the Coral Sea and Western Australia, and will limit the
gas and oil exploration and fisheries industries:
I want to
emphasise that just because I am interested in environmental science, it does
not mean that I run naked through forests and strap myself to trees. I am
approaching this issue from an entirely non-emotional perspective, I can
justify my argument with logic and scientific evidence, and I certainly take
into account the industries, businesses and families that would be affected.
The network of
Australian reefs, and particularly the barrier reef – the world’s largest reef
system - is a biological treasure to be protected. To put it in perspective,
reefs make up just 0.25% of the ocean, and yet they constitute 12% of the
entire ocean’s biodiversity; they produce the most biomass per unit area of any
biological system on Earth. Six of the seven known sea turtle species can found
in the Great Barrier Reef.
The Great Barrier Reef: a natural wonder
Ten per cent of
the world’s reef systems have been destroyed completely due to human activity.
The stability of Australian reef ecosystems are being dramatically affected by
over-fishing. Because of the interconnected nature of these systems, removing
grazing fish species is essentially the same as removing the reef altogether.
The consequences
of losing the Great Barrier Reef are far more serious than the issue of
biodiversity, though. The Queensland tourism industry is worth billions of
dollars, far more than the worth of the fishing businesses that operate out of
the Coral Sea. Additionally, because coral skeletons consist largely of calcium
carbonate, reefs are can hold up to 60, 000 times more CO2 than the
atmosphere. When coral reefs are destroyed, this CO2 is released
into the air. Imagine the impact on climate change when we are dealing with a
reef system so big that it is visible from space.
Regardless of
the inevitable bickering that this will generate in the parliament, and
assuming that the businesses affected by these changes are dealt with carefully
and respectfully, I can guarantee that this is a big step in the right
direction.
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