The Greens have today succeeded in gaining support from all sides of politics to initiate a long overdue Senate inquiry into the spread of invasive long-spined sea urchins that are ravaging lutruwita\/Tasmania and Victoria\u2019s coastlines and fisheries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The inquiry will look into how to restore critical habitat such as lutruwita\/Tasmania\u2019s giant kelp forests which have been lost to urchins and other pressures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greens spokesperson for healthy oceans and Senator for lutruwita\/Tasmania, Peter Whish-Wilson said:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI moved for this inquiry because invasive NSW long-spined sea urchins have been range-shifting down our east coast with climate change over recent decades, decimating marine ecosystems and fisheries in their wake, yet virtually nothing has been done by the federal government to research, manage or mitigate this risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s predicted that lutruwita\/Tasmania has already lost 30 percent of its productive east coast reefs to the spread of invasive long-spined sea urchins, with entire swathes of critical habitat made totally barren of the biodiversity that is critical to our marine life and fisheries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cScientific modelling predicts that by 2050 half of lutruwita\/Tasmania\u2019s reefs will be gone if we don\u2019t take immediate action on climate change mitigation and adaptation measures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere is much we can do to restore our vanishing marine forests and other habitats, but the good work already underway urgently needs federal government assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Great Barrier Reef receives billions of dollars in federal funding to help restore its much degraded ecosystems, but its sister to the south – the Great Southern Reef – gets next to no funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBoth recreational and commercial fishing groups have been calling for federal government intervention on this critical problem. This inquiry will give these groups a chance to be heard, as well as hear from scientific, First Nations and other stakeholders about what can be done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Greens have today succeeded in gaining support from all sides of politics to initiate a long overdue Senate inquiry into the spread of invasive long-spined sea urchins that are ravaging lutruwita\/Tasmania and Victoria\u2019s coastlines and fisheries. The inquiry will look into how to restore critical habitat such as lutruwita\/Tasmania\u2019s giant kelp forests which have … Continue reading “Restoring lutruwita\/Tasmania\u2019s oceans on the political agenda in Canberra\u00a0“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18089,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18088\/revisions\/18089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}