The Great Barrier Reef is fighting for life and we are fighting for her future. Help build resilience into our most precious marine ecosystems.

Funds raised for the Reef Rescue Appeal will be used by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation to help the Reef recover and build its resilience for the future.

Internationally acclaimed marine scientist and climate change specialist, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg remains optimistic that we can turn the tide on climate change and save coral reefs for generations to come.

“If we don’t act in the next few years, we won’t have a reef that’s full of corals. No corals, no fish, no economic benefits and no beautiful reefs. A miserable tragedy. . . But if we start today and we dig very deeply into rapidly reducing greenhouse emissions, and we build the resilience of the reef systems, we have a good chance of preserving, not all the coral that we have today, but a substantial amount.”

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
University of Queensland
Chief Scientist, Great Barrier Reef Foundation

This summer, the Great Barrier Reef has experienced multiple cyclones, flash flooding, and now a marine heatwave is causing mass coral bleaching. Rising ocean temperatures are threatening the Reef’s very survival.

We’ve made significant progress advancing methods to restore reefs damaged by the impacts of climate change, but coral reefs remain one of the most vulnerable ecosystem on the planet. The Great Barrier Reef can recover, but she needs your support.

When she hurts, we hurt. You can help rescue the Reef and build her resilience to the challenges of a warming planet. 

There’s never been a more dangerous time for our reef systems, but the good news is we’ve never been in a better position to respond to the threat.

In the past five years, there have been more advancements in applicable solutions than have been achieved in the past 50 years. We already have the research and solutions ready to protect the Reef, but we need your help to implement them at scale.

Here’s how your support will help rescue the Reef. 

  • Your support will help fund immediate response actions, including ranger-led and technology-driven monitoring missions to understand and map the affected sites and assess damage. This informs the next step: a restoration and resilience plan.

  • You can help us restore areas of the Reef that have been damaged by bleaching through programs such as coral fragment planting and our innovative Coral IVF program.

    Occurring alongside the once-a-year coral spawning event, our Coral IVF program collects millions of coral babies in floating pools, harvests them, then deploys them onto damaged reefs to restore and repopulate them.

  • You can help build long-term resilience in the Reef. Your donations will help accelerate the research and deployment of corals with increased thermal tolerance. These corals are part of a toolkit of solutions that are ready to be deployed onto the Reef.

A Reef Rescue Appeal advisory team made up of scientists, Traditional Owners and Reef stakeholders will assess where the need is greatest and which projects are required to respond, recover, and promote resilience. The Great Barrier Reef Foundation will work with partners to initiate projects on areas most impacted and with the highest chance of recovery. 

The Reef can still return to health, but only with help. Please donate today to rescue the Reef and protect her for future generations.

Acknowledgement of Country

We acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first inhabitants and the traditional custodians of the lands where we live, learn and work. We pay our respects to the Elders past, present, and emerging, for they hold the memories, the traditions and culture.