14 DAY TRIAL // In a new analysis released today, January 10, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) draws attention on a series of ecological disasters that are currently ongoing off the coasts of Australia, and which threaten habitats, ecosystems, biodiversity and the Great Barrier Reef.
The GBR is considered to be the world's largest living superorganism, and is an iconic image of Australia and the Southern Hemisphere. Throughout the immense area it covers, biodiversity has thrived over the past few million years.
In all respects, this area is an evolutionary hot spot, where new species of fish, invertebrates and other marine animals and plants appear, develop, and get integrated in the ecosystem's food web.
But now all this is being affected by the massive amounts of rain that the Australian continent has been receiving lately. While the precipitations were beneficial for the country's Wheat Belt, not the same can be said about areas such as Queensland.
Here, overflowing rivers have flooded small towns and farms, taking with them everything people accumulated over a lifetime. At the same time, a wide variety of chemicals, fertilizers, and other agents have been taken by the waters.
All of these substances eventually made their way into the ocean, and flowed over the Great Barrier Reef, affecting both the corals and the species living among them. It is expected that the floods will also affect turtles and dugogns, among others.
“In addition to the terrible costs to farmers and communities in Queensland, we will also see a major and extremely harmful decline in water quality on the Great Barrier Reef,” explains WWF spokesman Nick Heath.
One of the most effective ways of protecting the country from suffering this type of floods ever again, the expert added, is to restore woodlands in catchment areas of the Fitzroy River and Murray Darling Basin.
“Today’s floods are bigger, dirtier and more dangerous from excessive tree clearing, overgrazing and soil compaction,” Heath explains.
“As a result less water infiltrates deep into the soil, increasing the size and erosive intensity of floods. While the current floods would still have occurred, trees and wetlands slow flood waters down and absorb water, lessening the impact of the flood,” he goes on to say.
“Better management and design of our farms can reduce the risks to people, livelihoods and wildlife and also lead to greater profits further down the track by increasing deep infiltration and soil moisture, improved topsoil retention and therefore productivity,” he concludes.