The spread of European settlement in coastal Queensland - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 54

sections of it - particularly in Cape York - for most of the period of European
settlement means that European impacts were localised, especially in the Cairns,
Townsville, Whitsunday and Gladstone areas. Besides the indirect effects of
terrestrial activities, considerable impacts on parts of the Great Barrier Reef also
occurred directly as a result of many activities, such as guano and coral mining,
coral and shell collecting, the introduction of exotic taxa (such as Lantana spp. )
to islands, and dugong and marine turtle fishing. These and other impacts are
discussed in the chapters that follow, which present evidence of some of the main
changes in the coral reefs, islands and marine wildlife of the Great Barrier Reef.
Note
1 See the Annual Reports, Queensland Department of Mines, QPP , various years.