A new plan to safeguard Ningaloo Reef from a warming climate has been announced for the World Heritage Site, but its funding is not ongoing.
Key points:
- The Ningaloo climate resilience strategy is seeking funding from government and private enterprises
- The state government says some parts of the strategy will not be implemented
- The newly released plan comes ahead of a major coral spawning event for the Ningaloo Reef
The Ningaloo Coast Resilience Strategy was launched this week by the West Australian government and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation as a "world first" under the not-for-profit's global Resilient Reefs Initiative.
The reef is one of four — including other World Heritage sites in New Caledonia, Palau, and Belize — to recently develop climate adaption strategies.
Although the WA government jointly announced the new Ningaloo plan, it has not yet put any money behind it.
A Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions spokesperson said actions identified in the strategy were currently unfunded.
"And not all the actions identified will be implemented," she said.
"The strategy provides guidance on what the community aspires to achieve and a best-practice approach to achieving this."
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation has been distributing $1 million of seed funding to get some projects under the strategy started.
Managing director of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation Anna Marsden said it was hoping government, philanthropists, and companies who cared about Ningaloo would contribute funds.
"This strategy does essentially show a shopping list of ways that you can help protect this amazing icon," she said.
"We're hoping that, in a year or so, you and I can be talking about how much money has now been directed to the preservation of Ningaloo as a result of this world-first strategy."
WA Environment Minister Reece Whitby said the resilience strategy would bring funding opportunities for local communities, government, and traditional owners to work together.
Greens MP Brad Pettitt said the fact there was no commitment from the state government to fund the environmental plan was disappointing.
"It is hard not to feel cynical," he said.
"[It] is in danger of being nothing more than another report highlighting what needs to be done, but not being funded to actually do anything.
"This amazing part of the world deserves a plan that is ambitious and fully funded. That would be a world-first worth talking about."
Strategy seeks sustainable outcomes
The strategy has five broad pillars and 34 individual actions to guide management priorities of the Ningaloo Coast for the next 20 years.
One action says there needs to be an understanding of the "optimal" levels for the region's population and impacts from tourism, infrastructure, services, and extractive industries.
Baiyungu elder Hazel Walgar said everyone needed to help to heal the sea country.
"Dunes have now been eroded. Places we use to sit with protection are now eroded and gone," she said.
"Marine life where we use to get a feed, we can't get a feed anymore … fishing competitions every year are impacting the ocean.
"Dugong — we don't see them as often anymore — they are frightened by all the boats. We have seen all these changes, especially over the past 10 to 20 years."
Exmouth's Cape Conservation Group's Denise Fitch said the new strategy, including greater local environmental responsibility, was a positive step for the community.
"What I'm seeing up here at the moment is we've got a fairly positive swing to conservation more generally that sits with the government's commitments to protections, particularly for Exmouth Gulf," she said.
Breeding coral resilience
The state government has supported new marine parks in the globally significant Exmouth Gulf, which lies adjacent to the Ningaloo Reef and the peninsula between the two.
A state task force is also examining whether further marine protections are needed for parts of the gulf where there has been limited research.
There are also several other research projects and studies already in motion to help protect the region from climate change.
Molecular ecologist Kate Quigley is research director at Minderoo Exmouth Research Lab and hopes to cross-breed corals and discover the genetic traits of species that are more resilient to warmer water temperatures and bleaching events.
"These are corals that are ready to release — very ready to release — their egg-sperm bundles," Dr Quigley said.
"At Ningaloo, that spawning event usually occurs seven to 10 days after the full moon.
"Then we'll have all these baby corals, we'll have all these larvae in really high-tech tanks that we can keep them happy in."
Dr Quigley said the coral larvae would then be monitored in a series of "stress experiments" over three to four days.
"To see if these individuals that we've bred … can really perform under high temperature," she said.
The work is being done ahead of a predicted increase of bleaching incidents to twice a decade by 2041 and once a year by 2046.
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