Major Integrated Project: “Wet Tropics People – Setting the Course for the Reef.”

Service: Improving water quality flowing from cane and banana farms in Qld into the Great Barrier Reef.

Client: Terrain NRM

Location: Tully and Johnstone River Catchments

Start: 2017

Completion: 2020

Chemical outputs from agricultural areas can severely damage aquatic ecosystems, as they travel through waterways out to reefs.

Pollutants from agriculture, including fertilisers and pesticides, can have serious impacts on local and regional aquatic ecosystems.

Inefficient use of fertilisers and pesticides in tropical agriculture, particularly sugar cane and bananas, can lead to export of nutrients (particularly dissolved inorganic nitrogen) and Photosystem II herbicides) to ground and surface waters ultimately flowing into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon.  

These pollutants can lead to stress of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem, particularly inshore reefs, seagrass beds and Crown of Thorn starfish outbreaks. 

Under the program, landholders were engaged to work together with natural resource managers and scientists to actively contribute to the design of the project and practice change to stem erosion and sediment run-off into local waterways.  

Phase 1 (Design) collaborative workshops fed into development of the project. Verterra contributed technical input as part of the workshop phase.