CANBERRA, April 18 (Xinhua) -- The Australian Greens launched a bid on Wednesday to protect a stretch of coast from oil exploration by having it put on the United Nations' World Heritage list.
A coalition of groups opposed to oil exploration on Wednesday launched a global campaign to have the Great Australian Bight included on the register.
The Great Australian Bight is a large oceanic bight on the coastline of South Australia.
Its length is defined by the Australian Hydrographic Service as 1,160 km.
Sarah Hanson-Young, a Greens senator, said experts were confident that the ocean area would meet the strict criteria required to be declared a site of global significance by the United Nations.
She said the bight had a larger range of marine life than the already-listed Great Barrier Reef with 85 percent of its species not found anywhere else.
"The Great Australian Bight is under increasing threat from multinational fossil fuels companies wanting to drill for oil and gas, risking tourism and fishing industries, coastal communities and the precious marine life that call it home," Hanson-Young told News Corp Australia on Wednesday.
"(In 2017) scientists discovered 275 species and a further 887 species already known to science were found in the area for the first time."
"The underwater environment is so diverse that scientists are yet fully to understand the richness of this complex ecosystem."
A successful campaign would make it much harder for oil companies to receive approval to carry out exploration within the bight.
Both Chevron and BP have abandoned plans to drill in the area with BP modelling finding that an oil spill in the bight would be nearly impossible to contain.
However, the federal government's National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority is currently considering a proposal to carry out oil and gas exploration within 100 km of the Australian mainland.
