A re-elected Turnbull Government will provide an additional $2.88 million in Reef Trust funding to help landholders, community groups and Indigenous communities combat gully erosion and reduce the amount of sediment entering the Great Barrier Reef.
The Reef Trust Gully Erosion Control Programme aims to reduce and manage the impact of soil erosion and improve water quality entering the Reef.
This programme is being delivered under the $210 million Reef Trust – a key commitment contributing to our efforts to boost the resilience of the reef and help it to respond to the impacts of climate change.
This builds on the Coalition’s announcement in early March of $4.8 million to tackle gully erosion in Great Barrier Reef catchments, and follows the announcement earlier this month that a re-elected Turnbull Government will establish a $1 billion Reef Fund.
These additional Reef Trust investments follow consideration by the Reef 2050 Independent Expert Panel of the significant impact of sediment on the health and resilience of the Great Barrier Reef and priorities for on-ground actions.
As part of their April meeting, the Panel endorsed this additional investment to address gully erosion in the Reef catchment.
Funding will help roll out a range of activities such as fencing off gully areas, revegetation, gully reshaping and encouraging uptake of improved grazing practices.
Teams of local community groups and landholders will target gully erosion in some of the highest risk areas of sediment erosion along the Great Barrier Reef such as South Cape York, and Burdekin and Fitzroy natural resource management regions.
These projects will help:
• prevent new gully formation and stabilisation of current erosion in the Normanby catchment;
• enable cost-effective erosion management in the East Burdekin;
• carry out gully remediation in the Fitzroy (Fitzroy and Mackenzie sub-catchments) through revegetation and grazing land management.
Landholders along the Reef have continued to demonstrate their ongoing commitment to Reef protection by making significant in-kind contributions, including labour and machinery, to reduce sediment runoff entering the waters of the Great Barrier Reef.
This shows how landholders, communities and governments are willing to work together and take action to protect our Reef.
The Turnbull Government’s comprehensive Plan to Protect the Great Barrier Reef stands in stark contrast to Labor’s record of mismanagement.
When Labor left office, the Great Barrier Reef was on the World Heritage Committee’s watch list to be ‘in-danger’ and five massive dredge disposal projects were planned in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
The Coalition took unprecedented action to end all five dredge disposal plans and put in place a ban under law on future capital dredge disposal projects in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
As a result the World Heritage Committee removed Australia from the ‘in-danger’ watch list and praised Australia as a global leader in reef management.
Australians are passionate about the Great Barrier Reef and the Turnbull Government is committed to protecting it for future generations.