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.”
The Biodiversity Council, a not-for-profit expert group of scientists, said “key findings” of the report released by the authority late on Friday “gloss over the gravity of the situation”.
Prof Catherine Lovelock, a council member and coastal ecosystems expert, said the “upbeat tone of the key findings contrast with the troubling detail held within the report”.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, did not send out a media release or hold a press conference about the report – two steps that were taken by then minister Sussan Ley when the previous version of the report was released in 2019.
On Friday morning before the outlook report was public, Plibersek was in Townsville with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, promoting $192m of spending to improve reef water quality and $100m for the marine park authority’s Reef HQ education centre.
Leck said the report was clear that keeping global heating to 1.5C was “crucial for the reef’s future”.
“However, the report sheets responsibility for achieving a 1.5C outcome to the global community without acknowledging that the Australian government’s current climate targets are insufficient to give the reef a fighting chance.”
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.
The condition of corals was upgraded from “very poor” to “poor”, while seagrass meadows had also improved to a “good” condition since 2019.
Most populations of marine turtles had declined, and conditions of seabirds, shorebirds, sea snakes and sharks and rays remained poor.
One of the “key findings” selected from the report said the “sheer size of the Reef, in combination with legislation, local management actions and Reef stewardship, is a protective feature against broadscale declines in ecosystem”.
But the report says the size of the world heritage area “is becoming a less effective buffer against global impacts”.
“The integrity of the world heritage property continues to be good but borderline poor,” the report said.
“However, without additional national and global action on the greatest threats to the Reef through this critical decade and beyond, the protective capacity of size as a buffer will continue to be eroded by persistent and broadscale impacts on the Region and adjacent areas.”
A spokesperson for Plibersek did not reply to questions about the timing of the release.
But the minister said Labor understood the responsibility to “safeguard and restore the reef” and said the government was investing $1.2bn in the reef.
Dr Roger Beeden, chief scientist at the authority, said the report was released “as soon as it was tabled in parliament, and we were duty bound to do that”.
He said the report had not shied away from the changes the reef was undergoing, many of which were driven by climate change.
