To focus expertise, wisdom and enthusiasm for the benefit of Moreton Bay
First and Foremost
The Queensland State Governmanet’s 2026 Coastal Management Plan places First Nations peoples squarely within the coastal management frame. It identifies Traditional Owners among those who share responsibility for coastal management, supports direct consultation about activities involving Country and cultural heritage, and encourages the use of traditional Indigenous knowledge alongside contemporary science. For Moreton Bay, this reinforces an important point: coastal management must protect cultural, natural and social values together — because they are connected through Country, coast and sea.
The Moreton Bay Foundation’s Blueprint for a Sustainable Moreton Bay 2025–2035 identified the need for coordinated, evidence-based action to protect and renew the Bay across its connected catchments, coastlines and marine environments. Queensland’s Coastal Management Plan now provides an important policy lever to help move that vision into practice — particularly through stronger recognition of climate adaptation, nature-based solutions, Traditional Owner engagement, threatened species protection, light pollution, beach access and the management of sensitive coastal ecosystems.
Plugging the Dyke
Policies are promising, but the test will be implementation. The plan sits within a wider coastal management framework that recognises the climate reality now facing Queensland’s coast: sea-level rise, storm tide inundation, erosion and increasing pressure on low-lying coastal areas. Queensland’s coastal hazard planning uses a projected sea-level rise of 0.8 metres by 2100, and the Coastal Management Plan recommends an adaptation hierarchy of avoid, mitigate, transition or defend when managing assets at risk from erosion.
That matters for Moreton Bay because adaptation cannot simply mean higher walls and more defensive engineering. The plan recognises that coastal ecosystems themselves are part of the solution. Mangroves, saltmarshes, seagrasses, wetlands and dunes help buffer shorelines, store blue carbon, retain sediment, improve water quality and provide habitat for fish, prawns, turtles, shorebirds and other wildlife.
Nature: The Original Infrastructure
The plan’s focus on nature-based solutions recognises that mangroves, saltmarshes, seagrasses, coastal wetlands and dunes are not passive landscapes. Instead, they’re living coastal infrastructure: storing blue carbon, buffering communities from erosion and storm impacts, improving water quality, retaining sediment and providing habitat for fish, prawns and other wildlife.
This is especially important for Moreton Bay, where habitat repair must be central to coastal resilience. The plan supports conserving erosion-prone beaches, dunes and near-coast vegetation, rehabilitating degraded dune areas and coastal ecosystems, adopting nature-based erosion responses where practicable, and keeping tidal river, creek and wetland banks vegetated.
The plan also strengthens the case for protecting Matters of State Environmental Significance and the broader ecological values that support Matters of National Environmental Significance, including Moreton Bay’s Ramsar-listed wetlands, and migratory wildlife protected under the Bonn Convention.
It calls for sensitive ecosystems, feeding sites, nesting areas and roosting sites to be protected from threats, and for habitat connectivity to be maintained or re-established.
Shedding Light on Light Pollution
Importantly, the plan recognises artificial light as a coastal threat that must be actively managed, especially around turtle nesting beaches and shorebird roosting sites. The National Light Pollution Guidelines for Wildlife already provide a clear, science-based pathway for reducing these impacts. Sunshine Coast Council has shown strong regional leadership through its Marine Turtle Conservation Plan, including practical measures to minimise direct and ambient light visible from nesting beaches and adjacent marine areas. The challenge now is consistent implementation — so darker beaches become standard practice, not isolated examples.
Putting the Brakes on Beach Driving
The plan is also clear on beach driving: vehicle access must be managed as an ecological issue, not just a recreational one. It recognises that 4WD vehicles compact sand, reduce the biodiversity and productivity of the intertidal zone, disturb feeding and roosting shorebirds and seabirds, disrupt marine turtle nesting cycles and destabilise dune systems. To reduce these impacts and protect ecological values, the plan recommends leveraging existing permit systems, with the addition of nighttime and seasonal closures, high-tide access restrictions and inland diversions.
This approach aligns directly with the evidence base led by UniSC’s Professor Thomas Schlacher and colleagues, whose TMBF-supported 2025 global meta-analysis found that off-road vehicles cause “widespread, substantial and long-lasting damage to coastal dune vegetation”. It also reflects years of community advocacy for stronger protection of national park beaches, including calls for better management of vehicle numbers, high-tide driving and night driving during turtle nesting season.
Time to Act
For Moreton Bay, the challenge now is implementation. The State Government’s plan moves coastal policy in a more nature-positive direction — but that will only help if it’s acted on. It must now drive stronger local planning, better compliance, darker nesting beaches, safer shorebird roosts, healthier dunes, productive fish nurseries and greater investment in nature-based repair. Good coastal policy is welcome. But the Bay won’t recover through policy alone. It recovers when good policy is turned into real action.
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