The Australian Government will be making a decision shortly on a proposal to build the largest coal port in the world on the Great Barrier Reef. Building a coal port puts the Great Barrier Reef at risk of an environmental disaster.
The Reef, which a series of 3,000 individual reef systems that collectively rank as the largest, most complex and diverse mass of living organisms on earth, is World Heritage listed. UNESCO is questioning whether the huge dredging associated with the construction of deep-sea ports will prove to be the final straw for the Great Barrier Reef.
In 2011, Australia failed to notify the World Heritage Committee about a port-expansion where 21 million cubic meters of sand and mud were dredged and dumped on the ocean floor. A team of UNESCO investigators that visited the site found water quality had declined and put the Queensland government on notice, telling it that remedial measures would have to be undertaken to prevent the area being listed as endangered. That follows the discovery of algal blooms and acidity variations in the water, major outbreaks of diseases in turtles, dolphins and dugongs (sea cows), and above-average metal counts in the blood of fish.
Help save the Great Barrier Reef from an environmental disaster and sign the petition to stop a new coal port being built!
