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The Federal Government has announced a $60 million rescue package for the Great Barrier Reef which includes research on developing “resilient” coral, and paying farmers to pollute less.

Announced today by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the package, to be spent over 18 months, will also include an increased number of reef officers and vessels targeting crown of thorns starfish outbreaks.

Prime Minister Turnbull advised that more than half the package, $36.6 million, will be spent on “supporting farmers stopping runoff off their properties” in order to improve water quality.

Explaining that there was a “very strong link” between water pollution and crown of thorns starfish outbreaks, Prime Minister Turnbull explained “the techniques are basically to build swales and ditches and, you know, plantings to slow down the runoff, so that all of the fertilisers and nutrients don’t get into the river and therefore into the reef.”

The announcement appears to be on top of a previous $50 million announced in April 2016, also to help farmers reduce runoff and pollution.

That funding, phase three of the Federal Government’s Reef Trust, allocated $19.3 million to support cane farmers “to move beyond industry best practice for nutrient, irrigation, pesticide and soil management”, $23.7 million to “improve grazing land management”, and “$7.1 million to maintain water quality improvement momentum” in reef catchment area industries.

The Federal Government said the funds would kickstart a major research and development program for coral restoration.

The $6 million earmarked for the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the CSIRO would go to development of the program and would include “looking at how best to leverage private investment”.

The Institute will also conduct a feasibility study into interventions that increase the resilience of the reef.

Dr Line Bay, Senior Research Scientist at the Institute told Guardian Australia “those interventions can be broadly divided into two categories: those that seek to prevent the impact of warming, and those that might help repair if damage occurs.”

Prevention approaches were based on “assisted evolution”, Dr Bay advised, which were aimed at helping corals becoming more temperature-tolerant so they can avoid bleaching or bleach less from predicted temperatures increases.

This included helping to introduce coral from the warmer northern Great Barrier Reef to the “cooler but warming” southern areas.

He added “we believe these new tools for management of the Great Barrier Reef need to be part of a package that contains conventional management process and go hand in hand with strong CO2 mitigation."

A further $10.4 million is earmarked for an “all-out assault on the crown of thorns starfish”, and $4.9 million to increase the number of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority vessels targeting the starfish from three to eight and increase officers monitoring compliance.

Commenting on the announcement, WWF-Australia said it was positive but “nowhere hear enough”.

Spokesman Sean Hoobin advised “the funding announced today won’t get us to the water quality targets we promised UNESCO.

“Failing on these targets is failing the reef. With almost half the coral cover lost to bleaching over the last two years the reef needs a massive new investment to help it respond to global warming.”

Guardian Australia reported on Sunday that tourism operators received and continue to receive millions in contracts to cull crown of thorns starfish despite evaluations repeatedly finding it to have failed or potentially worsening the problem.

Those funds also included $2.2 million spent on a project to install giant fans on a small part of the reef to cool the water. 

Images: Crown of Thorns starfish on the Great Barrier Reef (top and below) and the Reef from the air (middle). Images courtesy of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

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