Cape York Peninsula is an important and iconic place. Cape York’s eastern catchments flow directly to the top third of the world heritage Great Barrier Reef (GBR), including ten of the Reef’s 30 unique bioregions. The Cape York region has exceptional, intact wilderness areas and a rich cultural landscape, with Traditional Custodians maintaining strong connections to country.
Yet there are also growing pressures on the region. Visitors bring litter and waste and damage cultural and natural areas. Roads and other disturbances cause erosion that washes sediment into waterways. Land managers continue to tackle the spread of weeds and feral animals. Severe cyclones and extreme weather, driven by climate change, threaten the health of corals and coastal vegetation. There is a need to address these pressures and take meaningful local action to preserve the values of the region.
Cape York Peninsula is one of five Reef regions developing a CAP, with a main focus in the south-east (Endeavour, Jeannie and Normanby catchments). The purpose of this CAP was to build on previous plans and combine the voices of Traditional Owners, community members and youth to identify priorities for practical, on-ground activities that will benefit the local marine and coastal environment.
This Community Action Plan (CAP) aims to:
- Establish shared goals for community Reef protection
- Identify critical projects to strengthen and accelerate community Reef protection
To build the CAP, Cape York NRM and South Cape York Catchments held seven workshops from October 2020 to January 2021. At the workshops, participants shared strategies for community action, prioritised these strategies and collaboratively developed ‘roadmaps’ to map out how their priority strategies will work.
This CAP documents the community’s proposed priority strategies to benefit the local marine and coastal environment, as well as the key values and pressures relevant for local action. We provide a prospectus of community projects developed during the workshops in Appendix 4.
