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Management

Royal Commissions disallowed oil drilling in the Great Barrier Reef, in 1975 the Government of Australia created the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and prohibited various activities. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park does not include the entire Great Barrier Reef Province. The park is managed, in partnership with the Government of Queensland, through the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority to ensure that it is used in a sustainable manner. A combination of zoning, management plans, permits, education and incentives (such as eco-tourism certification) are employed in the effort to conserve the reef.

In 1999, the Australian Parliament passed the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which improved the operation of national environmental law by providing guidance about regional biodiversity conservation priorities. The marine bioregional planning process came from the implementation of this law. This process conserves marine biodiversity by considering the whole ecosystem a species is in and how different species interact in the marine environment.

There are two steps to this process. The first step is to identify regional conservation priorities in the five (currently) different marine regions. The second step is to identify marine reserves (protected areas or marine parks) to be added to Australia's National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas. Like protected areas on land, marine reserves are created to protect biodiversity for generations to come. Marine reserves are identified based on criteria written in a document created by Australian and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council called "Guidelines for establishing the national representative system of marine protected areas ", also known as just "the Guidelines". These guidelines are nationally recognised and implemented at the local level based on the Australian policy for implementation outlined in the "Goals and Principles for the Establishment of the National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas in Commonwealth Waters". These policies are in place to make sure that a marine reserve is only added to the NRSMPA after careful evaluation of different data.

The priorities for each region are created based on human and environmental threats and the Marine Bioregional Plans are drafted to address these priorities. To assess different region's priorities, three steps are taken, first, a bioregional profile is created, second, a bioregional plan is drafted, and third, the plan is finalised. After the plan is finalised, activity in different bioregions may become limited based on particular threats an activity may pose.

In 2001, the GBRMPA released a report about the declining water quality in the Great Barrier Reef and detailed the importance of this issue. In response to this report, in 2003, the Australian and Queensland governments launched a joint initiative to improve the quality of water entering the Great Barrier Reef. The decline in the quality of water over the past 150 years (due to development) has contributed to coral bleaching, algal blooms, and pesticide pollution. These forms of pollution have made the reef less resilient to climate change.

When the plan was introduced in October 2003, it originally contained 65 actions built on previous legislation. Their immediate goal was to halt and reverse the decline in water quality entering the reef by 2013. By 2020, they hope that the quality of the water entering in the reef improves enough so that it doesn't have a detrimental impact on the health of the Great Barrier Reef. To achieve these goals they decided to reduce pollutants in the water entering the reef and to rehabilitate and conserve areas of the reef that naturally help reduce water pollutants. To achieve the objectives described above, this plan focuses on non-point sources of pollution, which cannot be traced to a single source such as a waste outlet.

The plan specifically targets nutrients, pesticides and sediment that make their way into the reef as a result of agricultural activities. Other non-point sources of pollution that are attributed to urban areas are covered under different legislation. In 2009, the plan was updated. The updated version states that to date, none of the efforts undertaken to improve the quality of water entering the reef has been successful. The new plan attempts to address this issue by "targeting priority outcomes, integrating industry and community initiatives and incorporating new policy and regulatory frameworks (Reef Plan 5)". This updated version has improved the clarity of the previous plan and targets set by that plan, have improved accountability and further improved monitoring and assessment. The 2009 report found that 41 out of the 65 actions met their original goals, however, 18 were not progressing well according to evaluation criteria as well as 6 were rated as having unsatisfactory levels of progress.

Some key achievements made since the plan's initial passing in 2003 were the establishment of the Reef Quality Partnership to set targets, report findings and monitor progress towards targets, improved land condition by landowners was rewarded with extended leases, Water Quality Improvement Plans were created to identify regional targets and identified management changes that needed to be made to reach those targets, Nutrient Management Zones have been created to combat sediment loss in particular areas, education programs have been started to help gather support for sustainable agriculture, changes to land management practices have taken place through the implementation of the Farm Management Systems and codes of practice, the creation of the Queensland Wetland program and other achievements were made to help improve the water quality flowing into the coral reefs.

A taskforce of scientists was also created to assess the impact of different parts of the plan on the quality of water flowing into the coral reefs. They found that many of the goals have yet to be reached but found more evidence that states that improving the water quality of the Great Barrier Reef will improve its resilience to climate change. The Reefocus summit in 2008, which is also detailed in the report, came to similar conclusions. After this, a stakeholder working group was formed that worked between several groups as well as the Australian and Queensland governments to update reef goals and objectives. The updated version of the plan focuses on strategic priority areas and actions to achieve 2013 goals. Also quantitative targets have been made to critically assess whether targets are being met.

Some examples of the water quality goals outlined by this plan are that by 2013, there will be a 50% reduction in nitrogen and phosphorus loads at the end of catchments and that by 2020, there will be a reduction in sediment load by 20%. The plan also outlines a number of steps that must be taken by landholders to help improve grazing, soil, nutrient, and chemical management practices. There are also a number of supporting initiatives to take place outlined in the plan to help create a framework to improve land use practices which will in turn improve water quality.

Through these means the governments of Australia and Queensland hope to improve water quality by 2013. The 2013 outlook report and revised water quality plan will assess what needs to be done in the future to improve water quality and the livelihoods of the wildlife that resides there.

In July 2004, a new zoning plan took effect for the entire Marine Park, and has been widely acclaimed as a new global benchmark for marine ecosystem conservation. The rezoning was based on the application of systematic conservation planning techniques, using marxan software. While protection across the Marine Park was improved, the highly protected zones increased from 4.5% to over 33.3%. At the time, it was the largest Marine Protected Area in the world, although in 2006, the new Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Monument became the largest.

In 2006, a review of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act of 1975 recommended that there should be no further zoning plan changes until 2013, and that every five years, a peer-reviewed outlook report should be published, examining the reef's health, management, and environmental pressures. In each outlook report, several assessments are required. Each assessment has a set of assessment criteria that allows for better presentation of available evidence. Each assessment is judged by these criteria and given a grade. Every outlook report follows the same judging and grading process so that information can be tracked over time. No new research is done to produce the report. Only readily available information goes into the report so little of what is known about the Reef is actually featured in each outlook report.