Today, the Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership (GHHP) marked a highly celebrated milestone with the launch of their 10th annual Gladstone Harbour Report Card, evidencing the partnership’s ongoing commitment to monitoring the health of Gladstone Harbour.
What began with a pilot report card in 2014 that assessed the harbour’s health across 6 basic indicator groups, now provides an annual in-depth assessment of 33 different indicators ranging from mud crabs and mangroves to economic stimulus and community values. Prepared by the partnerships’ Independent Science Panel, the resultant data provides a holistic and accurate assessment of the environmental, social, cultural and economic health of the Gladstone Harbour, with each indicator graded from ‘very good’ (A) to ‘very poor’ (E).
GHHP Chair, Professor Iain Gordon, says the importance of this information in safeguarding the harbour’s future can’t be underestimated:
“With the Gladstone Harbour being at the centre of the region’s economy, and the lifeblood of our community, biodiversity, and industries, the Report Card is vital for informing how the health of the harbour changes relative to the baseline. This data can be used by government, industry, research and community organisations to make decisions about what actions need to be taken to improve the health of the harbour in years to come.”
“The fact that we now have 10 years of consistent and reliable data across so many indicators enables us to more effectively monitor and evaluate trends,” adds Iain.
In encouraging news, the 2024 results see the harbour’s overall Environmental Health return to a good (B) grade after two consecutive years of satisfactory (C) results, largely thanks to an improvement in the health of local seagrass and number of juvenile fish.
“This year the overall environmental health score rose from 0.63 in 2023 to 0.67 in 2024, taking it back to a B overall,” says GHHP’s Independent Science Panel Chair, Professor John Rolfe. “The main contributors to this was the seagrass scores, which improved from satisfactory (C) to good (B), and the Fish Recruitment score, which improved to a satisfactory (C) grade.”
The Water and Sediment scores remained ‘very good’ (A) for the 10th consecutive year, also contributing greatly to the high overall results.
Economic Performance was also assessed in 2024, which retained a very good (A) grade as a result of high scores in Shipping in Tourism. Economic Stimulus also remained at a satisfactory (C), despite a slight decrease in score due to low employment rates. Owing to stability of the indicators, the Cultural and Social components were not reassessed, and use the 2022 data, receiving a satisfactory (C) and a good (B) respectively.
To mark the partnership’s decade-long milestone, this special 10th anniversary edition of the Report Card also includes trend graphs for key environmental indicators such as water and sediment quality, seagrass and mud crabs, visually illustrating the results obtained over the past 10 years.
“These graphs provide a visual representation of how sub-indicators such as fish recruitment, are scoring over time, and confirms the need for continuous assessment,” John elaborates.
The Report Card also includes the results of the ‘Monitoring Human Dimensions in the Gladstone Region’ survey and a visual snapshot of the partnership’s key achievements throughout the year for the first time.
Both the Queensland and Australian governments provide funding to five regional waterway report card partnerships within the catchment of the Great Barrier Reef, including GHHP. GHHP is also supported by local government, industry, Traditional Owners, community and research organisations.
For further information and to view the full report card results, click the link below:
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