Major Science Report Pegs "Very Poor" Outlook For GBR Ecosystem - Oz Gov Released It w/o Fanfare On A Friday Afternoon

A leading conservation group has accused the government of trying to “bury bad news” about the health of the Great Barrier Reef by releasing a major five-yearly outlook report on Friday afternoon. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s 600-page report said the “window of opportunity to secure a positive future” for the reef was “closing rapidly” and the outlook for the ecosystem was “very poor”.

Richard Leck, head of oceans at WWF Australia, said the report was significant “but it’s concerning that it is released late on a Friday afternoon”. “This creates the appearance that the government was trying to hide the findings of the report to potentially bury bad news. That’s a cynical approach to managing the Great Barrier Reef.”

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The report assesses the condition and trends of biodiversity, ecosystems and other measures, as well as forecasting an overall outlook for the reef’s future. The report’s executive summary said: “Future warming already locked into the climate system means that further degradation [of the reef] is inevitable. This is the sobering calculus of climate change.”

The authority released the report after 4pm on Friday and said the reef’s fortune “remains one of future deterioration due largely to climate change”. Some habitats and species had improved over the past five years “thanks to windows of low disturbance and decades of protection and management”, the report said. The assessments were made before the impacts of the worst mass coral bleaching on record swept the reef this summer.

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/26/albanese-government-great-barrier-reef-report-ntwnfb