Jim Buck: ‘Visiting the Reef changes your life’

Jim and Annie Buck’s lives changed forever the day they saw turtles nesting at Mon Repos, near Bundaberg.

“It’s an amazing prehistoric sight to see animals crawling out of the sea and up the beach to nest.” says Jim.

It wasn’t long before they started volunteering their time to help the rangers monitor the nesting turtles at this critical site.

“We were asked to lead the program monitoring the green and loggerhead turtle populations on Lady Musgrave in 1987 and we’ve been doing it every summer since,” he says.

But Jim and his family felt they were the lucky ones. “You can travel to some extraordinary places doing very rewarding things just by simply volunteering.”

It was through this work that they fell in love with the Reef and volunteering equally.

“If people haven’t experienced a reef ecosystem, then they need to because it will just change their lives. The amount of life that you can engage with on a coral reef is astounding and to be able to contribute to its protection for me is pretty special.”

Jim, a road designer at the time, received training in the lifecycle and threats posed to the Reef’s marine turtle populations, such as the effects of artificial light pollution on turtle rookeries. He also learnt the importance of native vegetation on the reef’s Coral Cays for turtles and other important species in the reef’s ecosystems, such as seabirds.

A keen diver, Jim started regularly visiting neighbouring Lady Elliot Island.

This coral cay is a 40-hectare sanctuary supporting significant sea-bird nesting, with the surrounding waters hosting 1,200 species of marine life. The cay was left barren after years of guano mining (bird droppings high in nitrate used as fertiliser) in the 1890’s which is now covered in invasive vegetation species.

“We looked around and thought ‘there's lots of work that could be done here to pull this into a balanced natural environment again’.”

In 2014, Jim and Annie started volunteering at Lady Elliot by managing weed infestations and scaling up the existing small nursery to a stocking capacity of 7500 plants using ‘state of the art’ drip and micro sprayer irrigation systems to propagate and plant 32 species of native plants. 

When the Foundation launched its Reef Islands Initiative in 2018 to restore critical habitats and chose Lady Elliot Island as the first location in partnership with the Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort, Jim threw his hand up for the role of Ecosystem Manager.

Based on their four years of early works, Jim and Annie understood the amount of work which needed to be done. Prior revegetation works by the early lighthouse keepers and volunteers, and the enduring support of the Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service provided a ‘green canvas’ as a starting point. The new support of the Foundation allowed the work to be elevated to the next level. However, the need for volunteer assistance to plant, weed and provide manual assistance continued to be obvious. In late 2020, the current volunteer program was established and started hosting volunteers.

“Volunteers are imperative to the success of this program. We’ve advanced well over the last six years, and volunteers have played a significant role since the end of 2020,” he says.

“Time is the one aspect in our life we can’t reclaim, so I consider donating your time as the most valuable contribution people can make. We appreciate the support of everyone who helps our Reef.”

The program now has over 500 people on the waitlist.

The island boasts the only nursery on a Great Barrier Reef island, and thanks to Annie’s green thumb experience in plant propagation it’s filled to the brim with native coral cay species thriving on compost derived from the weeds which are removed by the program, resort vegetation waste and food scraps from the Eco resort’s restaurant.

These plants have been used in the revegetation of over 17 hectares of the island’s 28 hectares of ‘natural area’ so far.

Works have also increased the turtle nesting habitat in the island’s main rookery by 125%, enabling turtles to nest in safer locations, increasing their chance of survival.

Whilst the 1890’s guano mining affected seabird nesting populations for many years, population numbers started to recover in the early 1980’s as the vegetation started to regrow. “It’s great to see the annual seasonal bird nesting populations quickly adopting the revegetated areas.”, Jim said.

Now it’s a haven for over 50 species of seabirds, with over 100,000 nesting each season.

And why is all this important?

Because it keeps ecosystems in balance. “Coral cays are very important breeding habitat areas for seabirds, which in turn support reef ecosystems. They also support breeding endangered and threatened species of sea turtles and unique species of vegetation which are dependent on these ecosystems, with 80% of the worlds Pisonia tree populations growing on the southern Great Barrier Reef”, Jim says.

Whilst Jim and Annie have recently taken a step back from their full time on groundwork on Lady Elliot Island, they remain part of the support team for the program. Their legacy continues on in the incredible success of their revegetation efforts, which continue to bring the island’s ecosystems back to full health.

You can still find them on Lady Musgrave Island every summer protecting the Southern Great Barrier Reef’s turtles.