The condition of the Great Barrier Reef escalated from “significant concern” to “critical,” according to a report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
“A comparison between 2017 and 2020 shows that a total of 24 sites changed their overall conservation outlook, with 16 deteriorating and only 8 improving,” according to the IUCN’s report. “This is a marked shift in the pattern from 2017, when almost equal numbers of sites either improved (14) or deteriorated (12) compared to 2014. Worryingly, two sites have entered the critical category since 2017: the Great Barrier Reef (Australia) and the Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California (Mexico).”
Australia’s reefs showed signs of slight progress earlier this year, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, when the central portion of the reef had regrown to roughly 24% coral coverage between September 2019 and June 2020. The reef was then “hammered by its third mass bleaching event in five years,” wiping those gains.
Coral bleaching is caused by warming and more acidic sea waters. Coral bleaching used to be relegated to years with strong El Nino weather patterns, when atmospheric and geological conditions create warmer than average temperatures in a region. It is now occurring with increased frequency and damage.
“The reef is really struggling to show any meaningful recovery [since the previous bleaching bouts], and now, it’s bleached again,” said Terry Hughes, a professor at James Cook University.
The IUCN monitors the world’s 252 natural World Heritage sites and found that climate change was the leading danger for 83 of those sites and is “by far the largest potential threat.”
Fewer than half of all places on the World Heritage List showed improvement between 2017 and 2020.
“Climate change continues to affect more and more natural World Heritage sites,” the report stated. “The manifold impacts of climate change — increasing frequency and severity of fires, coral bleaching, damage from severe weather events, droughts, to name a few — are often accompanied by other threats. For some sites, such combination of threats has resulted in a deteriorated conservation outlook.”
One promising piece of news for the reef was that “total trout biomass was 122 percent greater inside the [Great Barrier Reef] reserves compared with reefs open to fishing,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald, demonstrating that efforts to preserve coral ecosystems can be effective.
