IUCN Downgrades Great Barrier Reef Status From "Significant Concern" To "Critical"
The conservation status for Australia's Great Barrier Reef has declined from "significant concern" to "critical" due to increasing impacts associated with climate change, a new report has found.
The damage to the reef is a result of ocean warming, acidification and extreme weather, which has resulted in coral bleaching, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) 2020 World Heritage Outlook report, which tracks whether the conservation of the world's 252 natural World Heritage sites is sufficient to protect them in the long term. The process of coral bleaching occurs when water is too warm and the algae the corals expel from their tissues cause them to turn completely white.
The decline of the coral has also resulted in decreasing populations of certain marine species, researchers found. The reef, the most extensive in the world, houses more than 1,500 species of fish. A third of the natural World Heritage sites are currently being threatened by climate change, the IUCN reported.
Warming temperatures have exacerbated the spread of invasive species in the protected areas of the Cape Floral region in South Africa, and the Pantanal Conservation Area in Brazil was heavily damaged by wildfires in 2019 and 2020, according to the report. In addition, the rapid melting of the Kaskawulsh Glacier, part of Kluane Lake in the Yukon, has changed the river flow, which has led to depleting fish populations. Since 2017, the conservation outlooks of 16 sites have changed to deteriorating, while only eight showed improvement, and the threats are expected to continue, according to the report.
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https://www.radio.com/thesky973/articles/abc-news/great-barrier-reef-has-deteriorated-to-critical-level-due-to-climate-change
