Great Barrier Reef Essay

Describe the location and the ecosystem, including all known feeding relationships. What is its current status?
The rivers and creeks along the wet tropics in far North Queensland are followed by massive amounts of banana farms. These farms run across 1500 kilometres of the Queensland coastline. During heavy rainfall, which is plentiful in the area, sediment and nutrients run off into the rivers and eventually end up in the Great Barrier Reef. One of the biggest threats to the Reef is Johnstone River, as it is one of the closest rivers to the Reef, and the farms along its coast are producing the highest yields. Banana farms are used very intensely and combined with the plentiful floods in the area, sediment runoff from the farms is at an all-time

What actions have been taken to lessen or rectify the impacts of human activity? Again refer to various stakeholders.
The federal and Queensland state government have both promised to protect the reef. Queensland Labour government has created a plan to protect the reef called “Reef 2050”. However, Reef 2050 has more ambitious water quality goals than previous plans, but even less funding. The plan has been endorsed by the World Heritage Committee, but specifically told the governments to come back with an investment plan and that it is a matter of priority as the plan would cost billions of dollars to achieve.
Banana farmers have also been working to reduce their sediment output, many have started planting grass in between rows of bananas to hold the soil in, and the Banana Farmers Council** has stated “[We need to] take all steps we reasonably can to minimise movement of soil from our farms.” Unfortunately, this is not enough. Even if every banana farm in the region operated with best practice we would only meet half of our water quality targets, more must be