BBC Wildlife

Great Barrier Reef Foundation

Jacob Cassady from Mungalla Station

Photo: Romy Photography

Can the Great Barrier Reef be saved? How Australia’s Indigenous Peoples could hold the key

By: Doug Loynes

For all the headlines about the declining health of the Great Barrier Reef, it looks in pretty good condition from where I’m floating.

How threatened is The Great Barrier Reef?

Headlines in March 2024 confirmed the worst. The Great Barrier Reef was revealed to be suffering from its fifth mass coral-bleaching event in eight years after a year of record-breaking global sea temperatures, cyclones and outbreaks of crown-of-thorns starfish (a predator that can strip a reef of 90 per cent of its living coral tissue).

Why Australia's Indigenous peoples could be the secret to saving the Great Barrier Reef

For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander peoples lived on the land that now forms the seabed upon which the Great Barrier Reef has been formed. An oral tradition known as ‘dreamtime storytelling’ reveals how communities developed a strong spiritual and practical connection with the Great Barrier Reef after sea levels rose, along with an intricate understanding of its ecology and how to utilise its resources sustainably.

Despite their wealth of ancestral knowledge, traditional owners haven’t always had a seat at the conservation table. Larissa Hale, a traditional owner belonging to the Yuku Baja Muliku people, recalls being the only indigenous woman ranger coordinator in Queensland.

Meanwhile, dreamtime storytelling has helped marine scientists identify trends in the populations of juvenile crown-of-thorns starfish that could inform projects aimed at suppressing future outbreaks. The idea that ancient knowledge can complement modern science – and vice-versa – is becoming a cornerstone of conservation on the Great Barrier Reef.

Elsewhere, Jacob Cassady, a traditional owner belonging to the Nywaigi people, is fighting to save the reef on another front. When the Nywaigi traditional owners purchased Mungalla Station, a coastal wetland area adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef, the channels were choked with noxious weeds. It was affecting the health of the reef. 

“Our Land and Sea Country are like our body,” Cassady tells me. “The waterways are our veins and the wetlands are our kidneys, purifying the land. If our kidneys stopped working and our veins became blocked, we’d get sick. It’s the same for Country.”

It was this deep understanding that led Cassady and the Nywaigi, in partnership with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, to successfully rejuvenate Mungalla Station in just two years by restoring tidal flows, so that the wetlands were able to resume their vital role of filtering out sediment and nutrients, and preserving water quality on the reef.