The Great Barrier Reef World Heritage area in Australia is a wondrous ecosystem, and one of the wonders of the world. Lumiere Charity received an email from Emma and the Avaaz team asking us to support the safety of this vital marine wonder. They highlight a situation which is close to the Charity's heart - that of conservation of the beauties of the earth God created for us to exercise stewardship over.
Emma and the Avaaz team apprise that one of the world's largest coal ports could be built on top of this irreplaceable ecosystem, risking the survival of this world heritage site. According to the Avaaz report, UNESCO reported that coal development is damaging the reef. Avaaz has an urgent petition to save the reef.
According to Federation Fellow Terry Hughes, the great Barrier Reef is slowly declining. In the last fifty years, it has lost half of its coral cover. Many coastal reefs and seagrass meadows have been smothered by runoffs of sediments from land. The number of turtles, sharks and dugongs today are a small fraction of a few decades ago. Coral bleaching due to global warming has occurred twice throughout most of the length of the Barrier Reef, in 1998 and 2002. Skin cancer has been found in Barrier Reef fish.*
The petition will be presented by Avaaz shortly. Please sign the urgent petition and send this to everyone you know. Please send the information on to your family, friends and colleagues, and post the link on to your Facebook and share it on Twitter.
Let us hold hands together in our global village and save the wonderful world our God has made.
Here is the petition; http://www.avaaz.org/en/the_great_barrier_coal_mine_global/?tta
Click into this link to find out more about the incredible natural beauty of Australia's marine wonder
http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/great-barrier-reef
*Terry Hughes, Federation Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University
http://theconversation.edu.au/new-marine-reserves-wont-address-unescos-reef-concerns-7638
~Photograph courtesy of Avaaz
No comments:
Post a Comment