"The GBR is a vitally important area from a biological/conservation standpoint and is also of huge importance economically."

Sorry, apart from tourism .. what is so important about the reef - if it didn't exist next week, there would be disappointed tourists but not much else.

I think you're getting wrapped around the axle so to speak that anything that currently exists must be preserved exactly as it is for no other reason than apparantly you don't like change.

I agree that's what a lot of people focus on, the ABR, but that's probably because it is a big headline issue for spin merchants in the press and politics. Some of us accept though, things change and we'll gain and lose bits and pieces of the landscape over time, stuff happens. Let it go.

Yeah RPG - stuff happens. We destroy our diversity, our landscapes and then move on until there is nowhere left to go...wise move...And of course biological diversity has nothing to do with us...
The problem with this article is that it creates a false conflict between the GBR and the myriad other environmental issues that are ignored. Reducing the amount of money being put into reef protection would only result in less money for the reef - nothing more for other issues...This is kind of a homeless man response - he blames the person in a house next to him for his misery rather than looking at the fact that both are being cheated by a political and economic system that really isn't interested in preserving our life support systems.
What's really depressing about the reef story John is that you may not even be right that people care about the reef.

Yeah that's right John. "Stuff happens." And how's the ecology in your neck of the woods eh?

In my state nothing much to worry about mate. The creeping white death now equivalent to engulfing 19 footy fields a day. No juvenile lobster left in our waterways. Major rivers like the Swan and Canning on life support constantly receiving artificial oxygenation. Mass bird and fish deaths.

Mining barons receiving a slap on the wrist for not monitoring tailings' dams or spewing out mercury over communities. Esperance poisoned with lead from an irresponsible mining company and a department of environment held captive by pollutant industries. Sick and polluted citizens resorting to employing Erin Brockovich over state government's denial of Alcoa's poisoning of the planet.

WA based mining companies plundering and pillaging the lands of other nations. Litigious actions around the planet involving Australian based or owned mining companies.

The new Premier opposing a fishing ban although other fish species are close to extinction. Uranium mining about to crank up. Hazardous waste researchers sacked by state government. Stack emission regulation does not include testing for polychlorinated dibenzo-d-dioxins/furans.

Pollutant companies burning untested waste oil as a fuel over communities. The National Pollutant Inventory blokes taking stabs in the dark over atmospheric toxic emissions.

Some 60% of land mass taken up by cloven hooved animals and Minister Burke and Meat and Livestock Australia busily coercing developing countries to buy more cloven hooved live exports. Who cares if animals are skinned or boiled alive by the barbarians at least they can't get at our feral animals. Oh oh....forgot. Live goats, camels and deer and I've forgotten about the export of live dogs too. "Now now Dickie, it's the economy stoopid!"

Corruption and Crime Commission flat out exposing the actions of ignorant sickos in denial, who strut our halls of parliament, colluding with pollutant industries and leaking cabinet documents. Recent former head of EPA exposed as a sycophant to Burke and Grill. Yesterday, another politician charged with corruption.

Aw John......for God's sake stop ya sookin' man!

Good article, John, thanks. What you're highlighting is the latest media and political fashion of being politically correct on environmental issues (as opposed to racial or other social issues in the past). The cane toad invasion into WA must be stopped, say the politically correct people, so give us lots of money! Governments cave in, supply the money and the cane toads just keep on coming. Stop all logging of old growth forests, say the PC anti-logging brigade! The government agrees and now we have serious problems of feral pigs, illegal timber removal, lack of management of jarrah dieback disease, no funds for repairing forests logged 50 or more years ago and so on.

The media loves an easily understandable story (hence the simplistic and largely irrelevant ramblings of greenies like dickie, by the way) so they run with stories about issues that really aren't threats to the Great Barrier Reef while other far more serious and solveable environmental problems are ignored.

While we continue to have a media that isn't interested in the truth of an environmental issue and while we have a former rock star and former president of the ACF pretending to be the federal environment minister, we remain unfocused and risk losing far more environmental assets than under previous governments.

Rock on Bernie Masters, former S/Minister for the Environment in WA, whose government remained unfocused and lost far more environmental assets than under previous governments.

Ah...but the "Bernies" are back in power and only last week the media (all lies, damn lies eh Bernie), reported that the Esperance residents should not eat seafood, found to have "alarmingly high" concentrations of the toxic heavy metal, lead. Fish in the Esperance area had lead concentrations more than 1500 times the national safe level for human consumption.

About 80% of shellfish in the sample area surveyed were dead.

Yet, to add insult to injury, your premier, Bernie, Colin Barnett, has been accused of putting profits ahead of the health of the already poisoned Esperance community.

He has outraged the Esperance shire, port authority and local community by overturning a ban on nickel exports.

So what do the "empire builders" have in store for the people of WA Bernie now that we have the eco-vandals back in power - more catastrophic events?

For those who ignore their ignominious past, are bound to repeat it.

Rock on Bernie Masters!

dickie,
The media reports last week about lead in seafood were based upon a small number of analyses carried out on a bivalve mollusc that is not consumed by human beings for food. The samples were collected by the Conservation Council who need to alarm people in order to gain funding support to allow them to continue their often political, non-environmental campaigns. Meanwhile, the Dept of Fisheries advised that they have sampled fish in the Esperance harbour and lead contents are well below allowable levels.
As for the 80% of molluscs being found to be dead, can you provide any evidence that the deaths are linked with the lead contamination? It's not uncommon in nature for die-offs to occur for many natural reasons and, with razor shells, once they die, their shells can remain in situ sticking out of the seabed for years, so even specimens that have died of old age will have a physical presence lingering on so that people like Nic Dunlop can suggest that dead molluscs and lead contamination are linked, when the evidence is lacking.
Keep attacking me all you like, dickie. People with weak arguments usually attack the person and not the substance of an issue.