Great Barrier Reef ‘critical’ as climate change hits natural sites but Giant's Causeway improves

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which for the first time is assessed as having a critical conservation outlook – which means it is severely threatened and requires urgent large-scale action to protect it.

Climate change poses the greatest threat to the world’s natural heritage, with the Great Barrier Reef now in a “critical” situation, a report has warned.

The assessment of more than 250 natural World Heritage Sites from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that a third of them face a significant threat from climate change.