The Commonwealth and Queensland government’s Reef Joint Field Management Program (the Program) is responsible for the ‘on-ground’ management of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (including conservation and monitoring, incident response, visitor management and compliance). Since the release of the ‘Reef Blueprint’ in 2017, it has also promoted and become involved in the development of new coral reef rehabilitation tools and management actions.
The Program’s engagement in reef rehabilitation has come about through a recognition of the accumulating pressures the reef is facing - including climate change. It has now led, developed and partnered on a number of management actions focused on rehabilitating small areas of reef and/or progressing our knowledge in what tools we may use to improve reef resilience into the future.
In this presentation I will provide a summation of the projects the Program has been engaged in since 2018 along with some early outcomes. I will also describe how the Program has gone about this work (including some of the things we have learned along the way) and how the Program intends to remain engaged in and supportive of the developing field of reef rehabilitation in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.