The Cows are Killing the Reef.

The Cows are Killing the Reef.

Get the facts:

– 80 percent of the land adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area supports agricultural production, primarily beef cattle grazing and intensive cropping agriculture.

– Beef cattle grazing is the largest single land use with approximately 4,500,000 cattle grazing in the Great Barrier Reef Catchment (Department of Primary Industries & Fisheries 1993). Grazing land management has resulted in extensive clearance of vegetation and with over-stocking, particularly during drought conditions has caused widespread soil erosion and the export of eroded material, with its associated nutrients, into the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

– The principal consequence for the Great Barrier Reef from the introduction of beef grazing on catchment lands stems from increased soil erosion.

(source: Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority)

– What’s killing the reef is (in order of importance):
Fine silt (the major coral killer), over 75% of which comes from grazing lands
Nitrogen pollution, mostly particulate, from sediment erosion of grazing lands
Phosphorous pollution, mostly particulate, from sediment erosion of grazing lands

– …the reef used to be amazing, but the report card [from the Queensland Government’s Reef Water Quality Protection Plan Secretariat] released in July 2013 has now downgraded the health of the Great Barrier Reef to “poor”. 72% of the reef’s hard coral has died since the 1960′s…”

(source: The World Preservation Foundation)

read more: http://www.vivalavegan.net/community/articles/839-are-cows-killing-the-reef.html