Targets Met in 2021-22 Reef Water Quality Report Card

The Reef Water Quality Report Card 2021 and 2022, has just been released with great results indicated for Cape York’s catchments and waterways. The report card reports progress towards the Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan targets and objectives up to June 2022. A snapshot of the report card suggests that improved management of the Cape York region’s catchments and waterways is seeing them maintained in good condition with continued progress towards our water quality and catchment management targets and objectives.

Computer models indicate that water quality targets have been successfully met at the regional and finer catchment scale for fine sediment and particulate nutrients including those for the Normanby Catchment. The models also estimate that the Endeavour Catchment is making very good progress towards reduction in fine sediment and particulate phosphorus with an overall progress of 8.3 % for sediment and 5.9% for particulate phosphorus - towards the 2025 target of a 10% reduction. 

A fantastic result of 1640 tonnes of estimated sediment has been saved from flowing into the Reef thanks to restoration initiatives including those by the Australian Government’s Reef Trust Phase 4, which includes Cape York NRM’s Scaling up Normanby Basin gully and streambank restoration in priority areas project, as one of multiple projects undertaken throughout this reporting period. Each project has contributed to the reduction in fine sediment and particulate nutrients. 

Katelyn Greaves, Project Officer at Cape York NRM said “This was a successful project involving multiple landholders who all contributed and made tremendous efforts to implement and alter their land management practice change in order to lower sediment loads.” 

Katelyn added “We value and are incredibly appreciative of the knowledge our landholders provide to all our projects, with such contributions the Reef will see immense benefits.”

However, further work is required to continue to reduce the particulate nitrogen loads. Cape York NRM is currently undertaking another gully remediation project to assist with these aspects and further contribute to the Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan targeted load reductions. 

Katelyn says “As indicated by the report card we have made great progress to achieve moderate condition for our seagrass and inshore marine condition metrics and hopefully we can continue to improve further by working with our landholders and the Cape York NRM team.” 

For the first time since the introduction of the interactive report card, in 2022 the Cape York region saw amazing ground cover results where 90% of grazing lands had a greater than 70% ground cover in the late dry season. This was a result of higher-than-average rainfall over the previous two years and meets the ground cover catchment management target.

The Cape York region also saw progress towards other targets and objectives including:

• No measurable loss of natural wetland extent in the Cape York region during the 2021-22 reporting period
• An improvement in inshore marine condition from poor condition in 2020 to moderate condition in 2022
• Loss of riparian woody vegetation was good, less than 0.1% across Cape York
• There are also signs of recovery for seagrass, with improvement from poor condition in 2020 to a moderate condition in 2022

The report card also aims to tell the human story behind land management practice changes, with social monitoring data that presents opinions of graziers (and other land managers) engaged in practice change projects to reduce sediments and nutrients entering local Cape York waterways. You can find out more about landholders' experiences of adopting new practices and their motivations to change, in these landholder stories. 

Together the Australian and Queensland governments have committed close to $1.8 billion from 2014 to 2030 to improve water quality and will continue to work with regional organisations to continue improvement.

Cape York NRM will continue to work with the agricultural industry and landholders to improve management practices and reduce run-off to the Reef. Let’s keep on improving!

Report card results are collated through the Paddock to Reef Integrated Monitoring, Modelling and Reporting Program which is funded by the Australian and Queensland governments. You can fully explore the results through the interactive Reef Water Quality Report Card.