sydney

Australia's environment minister, Robert Hill, has come into conflict with non-government scientists over whether extra steps are needed to protect two of Australia's main environmental attractions.

Coral crisis: researchers have raised the alarm at Unesco over threats to the Great Barrier Reef. Credit: GARRY BELL/FRANK SPOONER

The government is facing opposition to its decision to allow uranium mining in the Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. It is also under fire for its failure to take a firm stand on global warming, which, argue critics, is threatening the health of the Great Barrier Reef.

The government is rejecting demands that these areas, already featured as World Heritage Areas by Unesco, be placed on the Unesco ‘endangered’ list.

One of the disputes arose from a Unesco investigation into the damage that could be caused by the development of a uranium mine and mill at Jabiluka in Kakadu, which was approved by the government after years of opposition.

Environmental activists, the local aboriginal Mirrar people and many scientists, joined last week by the Australian Catholic Social Justice Council, argue that the mine would irrevocably damage the World Heritage values of the park.

The Unesco mission concluded that the park “is exposed to serious threats which are placing it under both ascertained and potential danger”. Hill, a lawyer, has accused the mission of bias, lack of balance and factual errors. The mission, led by Francesco Francioni, an Italian environmental lawyer who also chairs the World Heritage Committee, recommended that the Jabiluka project should not proceed.

In its report, presented to the Bureau of the World Heritage Committee at its meeting in Kyoto, Japan, two weeks ago, the mission said that its recommendations “should be implemented in a spirit of full transparency and public consultation in Australia”. But the committee offered Australia six months in which to present fresh evidence against a formal “threatened” label.

Construction of the uranium mine has been proceeding rapidly following a High Court rejection of an appeal by aboriginal groups.

In a separate issue, Hill characterized as “not compelling” recent evidence linking world-wide coral bleaching to rises in sea surface temperatures (see Nature 396, 10; 1998). His statement in parliament followed the release last month of a report on the status of the world's coral reefs by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, an initiative of Al Gore, the US Vice-President.

The report concludes that reefs are “under considerable stress and are experiencing considerable damage” in association with rises in temperatures.

Frank Talbot of Sydney's Macquarie University, director emeritus of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC, has joined other reef researchers in appealing to Unesco to re-examine its World Heritage listing of the Great Barrier Reef as a result of the effects of land clearing, coastal developments and overfishing. Otherwise, they predict “the slow death of the greatest exemplar of coral reefs in the world”.