Sarah Dingle: The state of Queensland is lucky to have some of the Earth's most significant natural World Heritage sites, time capsules for the Earth's future, and of its past.

Steve Turton: Some of these species go back hundreds of millions of years. Their fossils occur in Antarctica yet they still grow in our forests.

Sarah Dingle: Two of these sites are inextricably linked; the ancient Wet Tropics, a rainforest system which runs down to the sea, where it meets another World Heritage wonder, the Great Barrier Reef. Both sites are under severe pressure.

Australia has until February next year to prove to UNESCO that the reef should not be moved to the World Heritage in Danger list.

Now a former head of the Wet Tropics Management Authority says the Wet Tropics too is highly threatened. Background Briefing has uncovered years of disinterest and neglect of the Wet Tropics Management Authority by governments.

Tor Hundloe: It epitomises a lack of interest in our most valuable World Heritage sites and of course ecotourism destinations. It worries me enormously.

Sarah Dingle: The Wet Tropics is celebrating 25 years on the World Heritage list. But plagued by pests, urban development, uncertain funding and with its management hamstrung, there are now concerns the Wet Tropics will also be put on the World Heritage in Danger list.

And a higher profile hasn't helped the Great Barrier Reef. A former senior manager says the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, praised for some of the best World Heritage management in the world, has failed to save the reef.

Jon Brodie: I'll accept that responsibility. So my advice to all young people is go and see it now.

Sarah Dingle: Before it's gone?

Jon Brodie: Yep.

Sarah Dingle: Hello, I'm Sarah Dingle, and this week on Background Briefing: is paradise lost?

The humidity is building as Professor Steve Turton walks through World Heritage rainforest in Queensland's Atherton Tablelands.

Steve Turton: So this was logged, this was originally logged, probably 20 years ago. What's missing are some of the really big trees that were taken out.

Sarah Dingle: Down by the shore of Lake Barrine, we find just two of the trees he's talking about.

Steve Turton: And they've been through many cyclones but they're still here, they're probably approaching 1,000 years, something like that, sort of middle-aged at the moment.

Sarah Dingle: Massive bull kauris, each about six metres in diameter.

Steve Turton: These are a more ancient form of tree. They're called gymnosperms because their pollination systems are exposed to the air.

Sarah Dingle: The bull kauris are living fossils. Their kind were widespread in rainforest systems over 100 million years ago when Australia was part of the supercontinent called Gondwana.

Only a handful of the Earth's natural World Heritage sites earn their listing for containing all of the outstanding universal values. One of them is the stunning Wet Tropics. It represents major stages of the Earth's history, and it also showcases ongoing evolution.

Tim Badman is director of the World Heritage Program at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a key advisory body to the World Heritage Committee.

Tim Badman: We've just completed a new global analysis of where are the world's most important irreplaceable protected areas for biodiversity, and the Wet Tropics of Queensland is the third, it's in the top three. I can't overstate quite how significant it is. You know, out of more than 100 000 protected areas globally, it's a huge finding.

Sarah Dingle: What makes this all the more remarkable is the fact that the Wet Tropics is a patchwork of rainforests, interrupted by farms and homes, which in total covers less than 0.1% of Australia's landmass.

There are also 13 species of mammal which exist only in the Wet Tropics, including a green possum, a rat kangaroo, and the extraordinary white lemuroid possum.

Bill Laurance: It's an ancient amazing species. I mean, it's a pure white possum. It is truly one of the most spectacular animals, iconic animals of the Wet Tropics, and it would just be a horrible tragedy to lose something like that.

Sarah Dingle: Professor Bill Laurance, from the Centre for Tropical Biodiversity and Climate Change at James Cook University.

I've followed one of Bill Laurance's colleagues, Steve Turton, to a spectacular lookout in the Upper Barron. We're about 900 metres above sea level. White lemuroid possums prefer areas even higher, in the coolest rainforest canopy. They don't come down to the ground, even to drink, instead they obtain all their moisture from dew or from eating leaves. That proved catastrophic in 2005 when there was a heatwave.

Steve Turton: This was a wakeup call, the fact that these animals were regularly spotted up until that heatwave event, both by researchers but also by the tourist industry. We had this heatwave event which we can document, and then suddenly we weren't finding them at all, which was a real worry.

Sarah Dingle: Along with Steve Turton, Professor Bill Laurance has studied tropical forests for decades, earning domestic and international accolades for his conservation work. Professor Laurance says the possum's biology makes it highly susceptible to heatwaves.

Bill Laurance: As the conditions get hotter, the leaves dry out, so it loses its source of moisture. The only way it can cool itself is by panting. And so it has to lose more water just to keep itself from getting too hot. So it basically gets caught in a crossfire between having less water to drink and needing more water just to keep its body temperature under control. And right now there are only four individuals of the species known alive. And it's probably just one more heatwave away from extinction.

Sarah Dingle: To understand what happened to the white lemuroid possum, Bill Laurance says we should look at the experience of the common fruit bat.

Bill Laurance: One of the things that we've been seeing in the last couple of decades in places like Queensland and New South Wales has been mass die-offs of flying foxes, fruit bats. We know that when temperatures hit about 41 or 42 degrees it's a very abrupt threshold and suddenly these bats become incredibly stressed, they start flapping their wings and panting and trying to lick their wrists to cool themselves off. They fight over little bits of shade, and then they just start dying, dropping out of trees, mothers with babies falling down on the forest floor, and there's thousands and thousands of these animals that have been killed by these heatwaves. We know that similar things have happened in the Wet Tropics.

Steve Turton: Tropical mountains may be where we'll see the first vertebrate extinctions, entirely due to climate change, human induced climate change.

Sarah Dingle: Steve Turton:

Steve Turton: Let's look at this big tree coming up here, you can see it's covered in staghorn epiphytes. A lot of animals like sleeping inside some of these big epiphytes, it makes a nice little place to have a sleep because it's like a little house, a nice soft bed, and they sleep up there during the day, and it's not unusual to see tree kangaroos sleeping in these big staghorns during the day.

Sarah Dingle: With climate change making weather patterns less predictable, do you think the cloud cover that these epiphytes rely on will stay or will it retreat, will it go to higher elevations?

Steve Turton: One of the concerns is that the cloud base will rise with warming temperatures because the condensation level will increase. Now, a rule of thumb, back-of-the-envelope estimate is that for every degree of warming it will push up the cloud base about 100 metres.

Sarah Dingle: The latest IPCC report confirms that the planet has already warmed an average of 0.85 degrees since the 1880s. Wet Tropics scientists say that's starting to bite. Habitats are shrinking, and the animals are following. Some species of possum which usually live at an altitude of 600 metres are now being observed at 800.

Steve Turton: The fact that we're observing animals moving up mountains would suggest that there is a climate change signal happening out there. Only about 10% of the Wet Tropics is above 1,000 metres. We're almost at 1,000 metres here, so if this land isn't here, there's nowhere for them to go.

Sarah Dingle: So we're talking about a very small patch of land which is getting much smaller?

Steve Turton: That's right, and therefore competition for that space will increase.

Sarah Dingle: Global action on climate change remains difficult. The obvious and most important strategy is to increase the resilience of the dwindling Wet Tropics by relieving local pressures.

On a warm afternoon in the Atherton Tablelands, Peter Valentine is sitting in his backyard, bounded by rainforest, describing what he calls government neglect of the Wet Tropics.

Peter Valentine: It seems to me very disappointing that the Australian government and the Queensland government are unable to provide a very low level of commitment to the Wet Tropics World Heritage area. It does seem to me that there's a sense of neglect when governments don't do their jobs properly, don't appoint boards, don't ensure we've got the best possible candidates, and that they seem to be unwilling to make the commitment at the highest order that a World Heritage site in any country normally gets.

Sarah Dingle: An internationally renowned World Heritage expert, Peter Valentine is the last chairman of the Wet Tropics Management Authority, an organisation he's been involved with almost since it began a quarter of a century ago.

He served as director on the board, and then was chairman of the Authority until last February, when he assumed his position would be renewed for another three years. It wasn't, and there's been no replacement for him to date. Three other directorships have also been vacant for months, meaning four of seven positions on the board are empty.

Peter Valentine: It's a particularly appalling state of affairs. Certainly in the last decade I think it's been rare when a full quorum of the board has been available.

Sarah Dingle: Appointments to the board have to be approved by the Queensland government and the Commonwealth, but there's no penalty if either party fails to do so for months, as is the case now. Peter Valentine says the board, and by extension the Authority, is hamstrung.

Peter Valentine: The expertise that comes to the Authority through the board membership where there's scientists, and people with expertise in tourism, our number one partner in the Wet Tropics World Heritage area, they are not available for the staff and so they're left in a sense in a bit of a time warp.

Sarah Dingle: One of Peter Valentine's predecessors, Tor Hundloe was chair of the Wet Tropics Management Authority from 1996 to 2002.

Tor Hundloe: When we didn't have enough money I threatened to resign at one stage. And that was announced in the media, and money eventually flowed through.

Sarah Dingle: In your last annual report as chairperson of the Wet Tropics Management Authority you delivered a very heartfelt plea. You said you were despondent at the lack of funding for the Wet Tropics and you said, 'In part I blame myself.' Can you explain that?

Tor Hundloe: Yes, I suppose I needed to be more forthright, I needed to demand more from government, and I just think in some sense I failed. Now, looking back this is the irony, I was more successful than WTMA is now. I feel worse now than I did in 2002 when I'd finished my tenure.

Sarah Dingle: The Wet Tropics Management Authority, or WTMA, is set out in state legislation, although it's funded by both the state and federal governments. In 2000, it received $2.3 million from the Queensland government, and $3.2 million from the Commonwealth. Twelve years on, the annual amount of Commonwealth funding was unchanged, and the state grant was less, only $1.8 million. And inflation means both contributions have been declining in real terms for years. During the same period, WTMA's staffing has dropped from 30 employees to 23.

Tor Hundloe: By and large governments have lost interest serious interest in our world heritage sites. It worries me enormously.

Sarah Dingle: In October, Background Briefing spoke to Dr Paul Chantrill, the acting executive director of the Wet Tropics Management Authority, who's responsible for its day-to-day operations. Since the start of this financial year, there's been no money at all from the Commonwealth.

Paul Chantrill: At this point in time the new government has not made a decision about future funding arrangements for the Wet Tropics. We understood there were negotiations in place before the election but they of course could only go a certain way down in terms of the approval process because of the caretaker conventions.

Sarah Dingle: Since July the Authority has just kept afloat with its funds from the Queensland government, only about half its usual revenue. Recently the Authority has even been struggling to maintain basic infrastructure in the Wet Tropics, especially the boardwalks in the iconic Daintree rainforest.

Steve Turton says tourists are beginning to notice.

Steve Turton: If people want to go to the Daintree and they're falling through a boardwalk because it's rotten—and I've seen the ones you're talking about—that's going to send a pretty bad message to the tourist industry, and for a first world country we should have first-class facilities. And they have to be funded because at the end of the day they are a public asset, but the private sector benefits from that.

Sarah Dingle: Background Briefing asked Tim Badman, the director of the World Heritage program at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, whether the lack of funding for the Wet Tropics was a concern for its World Heritage listing.

Tim Badman: What you've just told me is information I haven't heard before, so I'd need to take that back and check it. But just a general comment, obviously a fundamental requirement for every effectively managed World Heritage area is to have a secure budget. Conservation is not a six-months-a-year job, you need to be able to work for the long-term.

Sarah Dingle: Right now, two new pests could on their own result in the Wet Tropics being moved to the In Danger list.

The introduced yellow crazy ant has a voracious appetite, and it lives in super-colonies which can have hundreds of queens. Worker ants spray formic acid on their prey which can be everything from worms to birds, reptiles and even mammals. The ants are now well established around Cairns, and their impact on wildlife is devastating.

Peter Valentine: The main location for them is just on the boundary, and that's sufficient for me to be very, very concerned.

Sarah Dingle: There was an eradication program by Biosecurity Queensland, but to Peter Valentine's frustration, its funding was 'reprioritised' a year ago.

Peter Valentine: The Queensland government withdrew its intention to eradicate yellow crazy ant some time ago, in fact withdrew it within the middle of a program to attempt eradication, which did not help the situation at all.

Sarah Dingle: A spokesperson for Biosecurity Queensland says it does not consider state-wide eradication feasible when there's no national efforts.

Another invader, myrtle rust, is an airborne fungus which spread from New South Wales just three years ago. Myrtle rust attacks new rainforest growth, and the fight against it is already lost.

Peter Valentine: Now that it has arrived, because of the fact that the spores are windborne it will be virtually impossible to take on an eradication program. And that was known long ago.

Sarah Dingle: Did you warn you'd have to take these matters to the World Heritage Committee if there was no action on these two pests?

Peter Valentine: I think both of these developments and other biosecurity failures are the things that are more likely to lead to the Wet Tropics World Heritage area being listed as endangered.

Sarah Dingle: After months of petitioning the federal government, in November the new coalition government granted the Wet Tropics Management Authority almost $2 million to tackle the yellow crazy ant. Money from that pledge is yet to start flowing.

Peter Valentine: If we don't eradicate it with this current grant then it will likely become too late.

Sarah Dingle: The organisation is still without any baseline federal funds.

Background Briefing asked the Federal Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, why a statutory authority managing a World Heritage area had no federal money.

Your party took power only in September, but that still leaves three months during which the Wet Tropics Management Authority has received no money at all from the federal government. Why has it been unfunded for so long?

Greg Hunt: I actually have met with the Wet Tropics Management Authority. The real point about this is that they were not given any money on a baseline foundation from the previous government. I have met in the last three weeks with the Wet Tropics Management Authority in an attempt to and I am confident that we will provide that base funding.

Sarah Dingle: Given that they are currently without base funding though and they're celebrating their 25th anniversary on the World Heritage list this weekend, how soon do you expect that base funding to start flowing? Aren't you concerned they've been unfunded for so long?

Greg Hunt: Well, I am concerned but those are questions for the previous government as to how they could get to an election having not allowed funding to go forward.

Sarah Dingle: Out of the seven positions on the board of the Wet Tropics Management Authority, including the chairmanship, only three are currently filled. Whose responsibility is it to fill those positions?

Greg Hunt: Well, going forwards of course we'll have primary responsibility with the federal government, but we'll work with Queensland and others.

Sarah Dingle: Do you acknowledge that the Wet Tropics Management Authority can't do anything without a full board?

Greg Hunt: Well, I think it's a very important part going forward, yes.

Sarah Dingle: Those on the ground say a World Heritage in Danger listing is a real prospect for the Wet Tropics and for the Great Barrier Reef.

Steve Turton:

Steve Turton: It's likely that the reef might be listed before the Wet Tropics the way things are going. It might be that the listing of the Wet Tropics as a World Heritage in Danger might actually make people wake up and do something about it. It would be pretty embarrassing…

Sarah Dingle: To lose not one but two.

Steve Turton: …but two, as a developed country, where we simply do have the resources to look after it.

Sarah Dingle: At many points along the Queensland coast, from Cooktown to Ingham, the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area runs right to the sea. This is the start of another World Heritage site, the Great Barrier Reef, an archipelago of more than 900 islands and around 3,000 individual reefs.

At the jetty in Cairns, tourists are loading their suitcases onto the ferry. They're bound for Fitzroy Island, one of the busiest offshore hubs for seeing the Great Barrier Reef.

I'm with Cairns local Jennie Gilbert, and instead of luggage, we have a crate of water. Inside is a young green sea turtle.

Jennie Gilbert: This turtle's only really little, it's probably only about 10-12 years old, so we call them new recruits.

Sarah Dingle: And what does it weigh for that age?

Jennie Gilbert: Well, it's actually weighing near to what it should weigh at, it's actually 15 kilos. When it came in it only weighed about eight kilos, it was very, very skinny. We've had a 600% increase in strandings of green sea turtles in the last few years at Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre and an 800% increase in strandings up the east coast of Queensland.

Sarah Dingle: We're on our way to an outpost of the Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre, co-founded by Jennie Gilbert in 2000. The Centre nurses sick or wounded sea turtles back to health, and releases them. Recently, inpatient numbers have skyrocketed. Green sea turtles are starving. As they lose weight, they don't even have the strength to dive for food, so they float on the surface waiting to die.

Jennie Gilbert: If you've got a really large turtle, like a big adult turtle over 85-90 centimetres, it can take up to 12 months before they die because they're such a big animal, their metabolism's so slow and they can slow their heart rate down to such a low amount that it takes a long time. And when we do get them in and unfortunately they are dead when they're brought in, you open them up and it's sad, there's nothing in there.

Sarah Dingle: Green sea turtles eat mainly seagrass and algae.

Jennie Gilbert: What happened was after cyclone Larry and then we had the environmental conditions, the wet dry and the floods and cyclone Yasi, the inshore seagrass beds which normally recover after a cyclone haven't recovered, and these turtles are literally starving to death.

Sarah Dingle: Extreme weather events can have a huge impact on seagrass and on the coral reefs as well.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is an internationally renowned coral biologist, and a lead author with the IPCC. He says the future climate change scenarios modelled by the IPCC are a grave threat to reef habitats.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg: Well, I think the scientific consensus would say that anything beyond 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial will essentially eliminate coral from the Great Barrier Reef. To solve that problem you've really got to do two things. One is to stabilise the climate as quickly as possible. But you've also got to take the other pressure off coral reefs.

Sarah Dingle: The other major threats to the reef and its marine species are coastal development and water quality, local issues which are well within governments' power to address.

Last month, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority released the draft of a major report. The Authority, which manages the World Heritage site, wrote that the reef's health had significantly deteriorated, and 'key habitats such as coral reefs and seagrass meadows are in serious decline'.

When you think of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, you worked there for 11 years, has that authority succeeded in managing the reef?

Jon Brodie: Well, since we have such low coral cover and dugongs and seagrass, I think the answer's no. And, you know, I'm part of that, I'll accept that responsibility.

Sarah Dingle: Jon Brodie was the director of the Authority's Water Quality and Coastal Development Section until 2001, and he's now a senior research scientist at James Cook University.

Coral systems and seagrass rely on not just clean but clear water, so that they can use the light for photosynthesis. Jon Brodie says locally, water quality is the key to preserving the Great Barrier Reef.

Jon Brodie: Water quality is the key we can really do something about, and have been doing something about reasonably successfully. It's the one that we can manage locally, whereas climate change of course needs to be managed both locally and globally.

Sarah Dingle: Water quality on the Great Barrier Reef is subject to particular local pressures. The first is decades of farm runoff, from sugar cane plantations and other agriculture on the coast.

After 30 years of research and working with the community, Jon Brodie says there's now a lot of goodwill amongst many farmers to voluntarily reduce runoff. The Federal Reef Rescue Program provided funding for any agricultural project which cut down the amount of fertiliser and pesticides flowing out to sea.

Jon Brodie: Well, we've had great success even though it took a long time. We've reduced nitrogen discharges by 7%, sediment discharges by 6%, and pesticide discharge by 15%.

Sarah Dingle: But Jon Brodie says, in the end it pales into insignificance. What he now sees is decades of work with farmers being literally blown out of the water by the amount of dredge spoil dumped on the reef.

There are a number of resorts, casinos and port developments proposed alongside the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage area. The port developments require dredging of millions of tonnes from the sea floor.

What are the figures that you've come up with?

Jon Brodie: These figures are drawn from environmental impact assessment reports from questions in parliament and from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in their submissions to the senate inquiry on dredging. I estimate there will be 140 million tonnes over the next decade planned.

Sarah Dingle: What does this practically mean, 140 million tonnes?

Jon Brodie: Well, per year the total sediment delivery from all rivers into the Great Barrier Reef, that's all rivers from Cape York down to the Mary River, the average is about 9 million tonnes, of which 3 million is natural and 6 million is basically caused by agriculture; grazing, cropping and so on. So there's 2.5 times as much coming from dredge spoil as there is from anthropogenic sediment delivery from the catchment.

Sarah Dingle: And what link is there between dredge spoil and reef health?

Jon Brodie: Exactly the same link that all additional sediment causes to the Great Barrier Reef. So basically what does sediment do out there? Well, it reduces light to the bottom. We have published research on that, we know very well the effects of sediment on coral seagrass and fish and that's what we're worried about.

Sarah Dingle: Jon Brodie's numbers are heavily disputed by industry advocate, the Queensland Resources Council.

CEO Michael Roche:

Michael Roche: Jon Brodie's numbers are fanciful. I went back to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority site today just to see, well, what proposals have been brought to the authority. So in total, all that is there to be found on the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority site is 39 million tonnes of material to be disposed, and none of those are under construction.

Sarah Dingle: Are you happy with those numbers that you just quoted though? Do you believe 39 million tonnes, if all developments go ahead, can be dumped on the Great Barrier Reef in dredge spoil without affecting its outstanding universal values?

Michael Roche: You're using colourful language there. This is not about dumping on the Great Barrier Reef. Dredge material is not dumped anywhere. The disposal sites are carefully chosen to be away from seagrass, of course well away from coral reefs. It's all about ensuring that that environment is left with no lasting impacts from the dredging program.

Sarah Dingle: Dredge spoil mostly from port operations is disposed of within the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage area.

In response to environmental concerns, the federal coalition government has since announced the dredge spoil from one of the developments, approximately 22 million tonnes from a second sea lane at Gladstone Port, will be dumped on land.

Jon Brodie says that still leaves about 120 million tonnes of dredge spoil, and it doesn't greatly change his overall assessment of the health of the reef.

Jon Brodie: The answer there is to actually ask the federal government what its numbers are. One would think that as part of this whole business that a study would have been funded to put together reliable figures and put them out there in public. That hasn't happened either.

Sarah Dingle: Background Briefing asked the Federal Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, if the government had figures of total dredge spoil to be dumped within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park area.

Greg Hunt: I think that you've seen dramatic decline in terms of what was proposed, far and away the largest was the 12 million cubic metre Gladstone proposal, which has reduced on the figures I have before me against any potential by about two-thirds.

Sarah Dingle: Do you have firm figures of the total amount of dredge spoil to be dumped on the reef if all these proposed projects go ahead?

Greg Hunt: Well, no, because the proposed projects are in many cases merely concepts. So they have not put in place final figures, and my hope and my view is that we can proceed without having to do this sort of thing again. I think that that would be the direction in the future.

Sarah Dingle: And what about current proposals, like the Abbot Point expansion for instance which you're due to make a decision on soon?

Greg Hunt: I won't talk about current proposals.

Sarah Dingle: But would you like to see current proposals…would you like to see the proponents offer to dump their dredge spoil on land, would you like that to be a condition?

Greg Hunt: Well, I think you can see what I have done with the Gladstone proposal already, so that's given a clear indication of preference where it's possible to make these decisions to do that.

Sarah Dingle: Five weeks after winning office, the Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt signed a memorandum of understanding with the Queensland LNP government. It creates a 'one-stop shop' for all environmental approvals of projects, to be run by Queensland. The aim is to speed up decisions, and cut so-called green tape.

Is that consistent with our federal obligations to preserve World Heritage sites?

Greg Hunt: Yes, absolutely. What we're finding around the country is that of course any agreement which we sign or propose has to meet our federal standards, including our international and our domestic legislative standard. That is in turn lifting rather than lowering state standards.

Sarah Dingle: Others disagree, including the director of the Global Change Institute, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg: It's Australia that has signed onto the convention, not Queensland or New South Wales when it comes to World Heritage sites, so I think it's really important to maintain that responsibility at the federal level.

Sarah Dingle: Port development approval is a sensitive topic. The approval of more LNG processing and port facilities on Curtis Island, within the reef's World Heritage area, provoked such concern that UNESCO's World Heritage Committee sent out a monitoring mission last year. That mission found there were a number of port developments up and down the coast which were of concern. As a result, the Committee announced it will consider adding the Great Barrier Reef to the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger in 2014, unless Australia can prove 'substantial progress' on action to conserve the reef.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt says that's what the government is doing.

Greg Hunt: Well, I think the UNESCO concerns and in particular the World Heritage Committee's concerns were about the need for a port strategy and a strategic assessment, a need for consolidation, a focus on water quality, and these are the things which we are actually doing. We have put in place a reef 2050 plan with an essential focus on water quality, on reducing farm runoff, nutrient runoff, sedimentary runoff. These are the things which are at the heart of controllable impacts on the reef.

Sarah Dingle: The federal government is due to make a decision on Curtis Island within days, but it's not the only development which rang alarm bells.

One is the Wongai proposal, which would put a new underground coal mine, a barge-loading terminal and covered coal barges in the far north on Cape York.

Tim Badman of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature was part of the monitoring mission.

Tim Badman: Developments for coal extraction in the northern part of the site in places where there's been none of that type of development before really do create a whole series of issues that are extremely concerning and that are of a different order to addressing issues in areas which have had long standing development.

Sarah Dingle: At Fitzroy Island off Cairns, the young green sea turtle has been delivered to the rehabilitation centre, where Jennie Gilbert is filling up the tank of his new temporary home.

Jennie Gilbert is also worried about the Wongai development, with the waters off Cape York home to a major turtle rookery.

Jennie Gilbert: I mean, that's the most pristine area you can find for dugongs and turtles, and that would be just a shame for that to go ahead.

Sarah Dingle: Even the head of the Queensland Resources Council, Michael Roche, prefers proposals in the more developed south of the reef. He's also concerned about the Wongai proposal.

Michael Roche: Personally I'm not a great fan of that project but…

Sarah Dingle: And why is that?

Michael Roche: Because it is such a pristine part of the reef, and while I've not visited there myself it's been described to me. But of course that project does have going for it the promise of jobs for Indigenous people on the cape.

Sarah Dingle: The Federal Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, hints that the Wongai development may not go ahead.

Greg Hunt: So I'm always cautious because any pre-empting of a decision actually gives rise to the potential for legal cases. So what I will say is that the Queensland government's early indications are that they are heading in a different direction from the Wongai proposal.

Sarah Dingle: The World Heritage Committee also explicitly stated its concerns with another proposal, Fitzroy Terminal, a new coal export facility in the relatively undeveloped Fitzroy River Delta.

The Queensland Resources Council's Michael Roche says that project may also have a reality check.

Michael Roche: Quite frankly in that part of the world right now there's plenty of expansion and capacity nearby in Gladstone.

Sarah Dingle: So you're the head of the Queensland Resources Council and even you don't think that the developments at Wongai and at Fitzroy Terminal should go ahead because the Great Barrier Reef is in such a fragile state, is that correct?

Michael Roche: Oh well, I think the Barrier Reef is under pressure but of course it's under pressure for reasons quite separate from port development and shipping and dredging, as the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences has shown in its studies.

Sarah Dingle: The landmark study Michael Roche is referring to was published last year. It found that cyclones, coral bleaching, and the coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish were directly to blame for a dramatic fall in coral cover in recent decades.

The naturally occurring crown-of-thorns was responsible for more than 40% of the decline in coral cover. It also found that one of the major threats to the reef is water pollution from terrestrial run-off and dredging. Those threats interact with population outbreaks of the crown-of-thorns starfish.

Jon Brodie: And that is caused by nutrient runoff from the land. There may be a fish predator story in there as well, but that's not really proven.

Sarah Dingle: Each outbreak lasts for several years, and summer is spawning season. It's our fourth massive wave of the crown-of-thorns starfish in 50 years, and there are millions out on the reef spawning right now.

Jon Brodie: There has always been outbreaks, maybe even waves of outbreaks, but these had recurrent intervals on the Great Barrier Reef for hundreds of years, now we've got them at 15-16 years.

Sarah Dingle: We're in the grip of another wave of crown-of-thorns outbreak. Was this predictable?

Jon Brodie: Yes, absolutely. Katharina Fabricius from AIMS and I predicted this back in the mid-2000s. We know the cycle, we know the cause, and it was entirely predictable that we would have an outbreak starting between Cairns and Cooktown area there…another wave of outbreaks rather, somewhere after 2009.

Sarah Dingle: And what was done in response to your predictions back then?

Jon Brodie: Well, nothing.

Sarah Dingle: The landmark study on coral decline found coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef had halved to about 14% in just 27 years. But that's an average across the whole reef. Jon Brodie says the detail is telling.

Jon Brodie: That 14% is divided between roughly 28% across north of Cooktown and 11% south of Cooktown. I think we have a good hope of maintaining the 28% north of Cooktown, as long as land use on Cape York is managed properly. Is that going to happen? I don't know. Remember there are lots of plans for major developments on Cape York now. The 11% south of Cooktown, the best we can hope is to slow up the decline there.

Sarah Dingle: If the current rate of decline continues, in less than ten years average coral cover across the whole reef will only be 5%.

Do we have any hope of increasing coral cover?

Jon Brodie: No.

Sarah Dingle: Next February, Australia will have to prove to the world that our Great Barrier Reef should not be listed as In Danger.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg will be watching closely.

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg: We've seen a very big change in how we're approaching this. There has been rapid development, there have been things like the Curtis Island infringement upon the World Heritage area. Those are regrettable I think in terms of our profile internationally and I think very quickly we're turning into cowboys. I think it's a really critical moment right now in terms of getting that right.

Sarah Dingle: Should the GBR be on the World Heritage in Danger list?

Jon Brodie: Well, absolutely, because it is. The management has been very late in the piece and that's part of the problem now, that it may be beyond a tipping point where even that good management may be a bit late. You know, my advice to all young people is go and see it now.

Sarah Dingle: Before it's gone?

Jon Brodie: Yep.

Sarah Dingle: Jon Brodie

The Wet Tropics is currently celebrating 25 years on the World Heritage list. But current and former managers say that honour has never looked so fragile, due to climate change and years of government neglect.

Is this the most precarious moment for the Wet Tropics in its history since listing?

Paul Chantrill: I would definitely think it is, yes, yes. That's certainly a moment of truth approaching for Wet Tropics.

Sarah Dingle: The list of World Heritage sites in danger is dominated by poor, developing countries, which struggle to afford to manage them.

Former Wet Tropics chairman Tor Hundloe says it's unthinkable that could happen in a wealthy nation like Australia.

Tor Hundloe: We are in danger of failing. And we can't, we just simply can't. I just believe we can't.

Sarah Dingle: Background Briefing's co-ordinating producer is Linda McGinness, research by Anna Whitfeld, technical production by Andrei Shabunov, the executive producer is Chris Bullock, and I'm Sarah Dingle.