Australia's efforts to save the Great Barrier Reef will be judged by the United Nations' environmental arm UNESCO in 2013, a deadline that will likely push efforts to the limits as this would be a make or break for the tourist attraction if t it is deserving as UNESCO's World Heritage site and worth to be preserved.

Early this year, Australia's attention was called on by the global body after the latter got worried over the gas industry developments on Curtis Island off Gladstone in Queensland. The UN body's apprehensions all the more got sizzled up when in October, a new assessment on the Great Barrier Reef revealed that coral cover had been slashed into half due to cyclones, bleaching and the crown-of-thorns starfish, all starting in the mid-1980s.

UNESCO is worried the ongoing gas industry developments will all the more facilitate for the faster eradication of what's left of the coral covers, which according to the study is expected to slash again in half within the next 10 years.

The Great Barrier Reef could be placed on the World Heritage in Danger list if Australia fails to execute more appropriate and definite measures to protect the area, noting that the current safeguards in place for an environmental asset of global importance fare poorly.

In November, two separate studies found worrying scenarios for the future of the Great Barrier Reef. One discovered that millions of Crown of Thorns starfish have been found looming around in the central portion of the reef, threatening to wipe out potential growing and multiplying presence of beautiful corals.

Another found slurry, a watery mixture of insoluble matter which includes mud, lime, or plaster of paris, from farms in Australia had likewise been a major contributor to the collapse of the corals in the Great Barrier Reef.