The Reef is in Danger
Until recently, there's been a missing voice in the growing propaganda war being fought over the Great Barrier Reef.
Although she's a conservationist and uncomfortable in the media spotlight, Dr Alison Jones says it's time to speak out against the scaremongering and deliberate misrepresentation of facts about dredging near the reef. Dr Jones, an adjunct researcher at CQ University and an authority on coral reefs, says it's clear there is no credible, peer-reviewed evidence to suggest dredging is damaging coral reefs.
Dr Jones' claims are controversial, but riddled with common-sense.
Green groups have asked her to find a link between the reef state in the Keppel Islands and the issues being faced in Gladstone Harbor, but she says it's simply too long a bow to draw. Dr Jones said scaremongering over the Abbot Point dredging plan threatens to undermine efforts to tackle the more serious issues facing the reef. Hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars are now being poured into studies, offsets, monitoring, campaigning, legal costs and holding costs unrelated to the major factors that really affect the reef, she said. Greenpeace, the Australian Marine Conservation Society, World Wildlife Fund, The Greens, some scientists and increasingly the media and the community are wrong to portray dredging and dredge spoil as a major threat to the reef's survival.
Precious money spent fighting legal battles would be better spent on much needed research there are problems we need to get ready for and it's about humans, not just saving the reef for the sake of it. Green peace’s Great Barrier Reef website has been shared more than125, 000 times on social media and Dr Jones fears people are jumping on an uninformed bandwagon. A recent Australian Institute of Marine Science study found that in the past 27 years, 50% of coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef had been lost. Most affected was the mid and outer shelf reefs in the southern region and most of the damage occurred during extreme weather events in the three years before the comprehensive study.
AIMS researcher Glenn De Ath's study, which was published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, examined data from more than 2200 reef surveys dating back to 1985. An estimation of causes for the decline made no mention of dredging.
Until recently, there's been a missing voice in the growing propaganda war being fought over the Great Barrier Reef.
Although she's a conservationist and uncomfortable in the media spotlight, Dr Alison Jones says it's time to speak out against the scaremongering and deliberate misrepresentation of facts about dredging near the reef. Dr Jones, an adjunct researcher at CQ University and an authority on coral reefs, says it's clear there is no credible, peer-reviewed evidence to suggest dredging is damaging coral reefs.
Dr Jones' claims are controversial, but riddled with common-sense.
Green groups have asked her to find a link between the reef state in the Keppel Islands and the issues being faced in Gladstone Harbor, but she says it's simply too long a bow to draw. Dr Jones said scaremongering over the Abbot Point dredging plan threatens to undermine efforts to tackle the more serious issues facing the reef. Hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars are now being poured into studies, offsets, monitoring, campaigning, legal costs and holding costs unrelated to the major factors that really affect the reef, she said. Greenpeace, the Australian Marine Conservation Society, World Wildlife Fund, The Greens, some scientists and increasingly the media and the community are wrong to portray dredging and dredge spoil as a major threat to the reef's survival.
AIMS researcher Glenn De Ath's study, which was published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, examined data from more than 2200 reef surveys dating back to 1985. An estimation of causes for the decline made no mention of dredging.