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Five world-renowned scientists have signed a letter to UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay to thank UNESCO for its leadership in recognising the threat of climate change to the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage property.
Professor Terry Hughes, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Dr Sylvia Earle, Professor Johan Rockström and Professor Andréa Grottoli sent the letter last night from Australia.
Last month, UNESCO released a draft decision recommending the Great Barrier Reef be inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger.
The scientists letter is a strong show of support for UNESCO from some of the most revered coral reef experts in the world.
Credit: Andreas Dietzel.
For the first time, scientists have assessed how many corals there are in the Pacific Ocean and evaluated their risk of extinction.
While the answer to how many coral species are there? is Googleable , until now scientists didn t know how many individual coral colonies there are in the world. In the Pacific, we estimate there are roughly half a trillion corals, said the study lead author, Dr Andy Dietzel from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (Coral CoE at JCU). This is about the same number of trees in the Amazon, or birds in the world.