In partnership with Lendlease

The Reef Islands Initiative, the largest reef habitat rehabilitation project of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere, is a 10-year program pioneered by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. It is supported by funding from Lendlease, the Australian Government’s Reef Trust, the Queensland Government, and the Fitzgerald Family Foundation. 

Leading property and infrastructure company Lendlease will invest $5 million over 10 years and the Australian Government will match that investment dollar for dollar to complete the ambitious $14 million program that began with a significant philanthropic donation from the Fitzgerald Fam and matched funding support from the Queensland Government. 

The Reef Islands Initiative was built on the success of the Raine Island Recovery Project, which restored the world’s largest green turtle hatchery, through a program of on-ground restoration and conservation actions that will boost the resilience of these other ‘must-have’ island ecosystems and provide critical alternative habitat for seabirds, turtles, corals, and other terrestrial and marine species. 

A tailored program has been developed in consultation with experts for each island habitat on Lady Elliott Island, the Whitsundays, and Avoid Island. Individual project elements include developing detailed resilience and habitat maps for the island and its adjoining coral reefs, climate change impact modelling, piloting novel monitoring technologies such as acoustics, drones, under and above water automated vehicles, thermal imaging, and machine learning, on-ground adaptation and restoration activities, and carbon mitigation.