CAIRNS - ONCE an obscure tent town populated by gold prospectors, Cairns these days is attracting a different crowd - cash-laden tourists. The town of 130,000 now attracts a good proportion of the two million visitors who flock to Australia's north-eastern Queensland state every year for trips out to the Great Barrier Reef.

Dive shops on every street offer everything from reef day trips to 'I Love Cairns' T-shirts. Restaurants compete with one another, offering endless seafood menus. Information kiosks offer multilingual tour brochures.

AT RISK: The very existence of the Great Barrier Reef's marine life is threatened by the impact of global warming. PHOTOS: OVE HOEGH-GUILDBERG

This is where Mr Colin McKenzie, 53, owner of a dive instructor agency and a marine business consultancy, has built up his niche over the past 15 years.

'Take the reef away, and tourism does not exist. Take tourism out of this place, and Cairns does not exist,' says Mr McKenzie, who is also a director of the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, which is made up of major tour operators responsible for taking 95 per cent of visitors to the reef.

To make sure the reef and the industries that depend on it have a thriving future, those intent on raising public and government awareness of the damage that climate change can wreak are taking matters into their own hands.

Mr McKenzie set up a new political party last November to campaign for greater effort to save the reef, calling it the Save Our Great Barrier Reef Party.

The Australian government's inaction on global warming was the main reason for his plunge into politics.

The authorities need to do more to improve water quality in the Great Barrier Reef lagoon and fund more research on reef protection, says Mr McKenzie, the party's executive director.

The party, which aims to represent small marine tourism businesses, is set to contest the Australian federal elections later this year and intends to lobby for greenhouse gas emissions reductions and for Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

'As tourism operators using the environment to make our money, we have got a moral responsibility to look after that environment and to make sure that the government does its fair share of it,' he points out.

Australia signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and accepted emission reductions targets as an industrialised country.

However, like the United States, it subsequently refused to ratify the Protocol and so is not bound by its targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Chris McGrath is another individual whose dissatisfaction with the present level of government attention to climate change has prompted him to take action.

The Brisbane-based environmental lawyer has written a paper aimed at stirring debate among Australian policymakers on the need to set appropriate targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions - targets that will ensure the continued survival of the reef.

His paper - which harnesses scientific research that recognises climate change as a major threat to the reef - argues that policymakers have the ability to prevent temperatures from rising and must act now to prevent widespread damage to coral reefs.

He has already submitted the paper to various levels of the Australian and Queensland governments, including Minister for the Environment Malcolm Turnbull and Queensland's environment minister and environmental protection agency.

Over the coming months, he intends to present his analysis to different conferences, levels of government, non-governmental organisations and community groups.

Should they encounter climate change sceptics, both 'reef campaigners' say they stand on solid research that will back them up.

The work done by Dr Janice Lough, for example, would make unbelievers think twice.

The climatologist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville studies coral cores - extracts from coral skeletons dating back nearly 400 years - to chart ancient climate patterns.

Her research shows that never before in history have there been the kind of temperature spikes that have caused major bleaching events in the past two decades.

'I have got an industry that is really all about going out there and showing people just how wonderful that reef is. I want to be able to continue doing it. I want my grandkids to be able to continue doing it, and there are things that can be done to make sure of that.' - MR COLIN MCKENZIE, owner of a dive instructor agency and a marine business consultancy in Cairns

'What coral cores tell us is that global warming in the last 20 years is real. It's not just a geological phenomenon. There is evidence that there are extremes and the temperature curve is going up,' she says.

'People should realise climate change is the No. 1 long-term threat to corals.'

And at least one tour operator in Cairns is heeding the science.

Quicksilver Group, one of the largest marine tourism operators in Queensland, has over the past three years been experimenting with shade- cloths to shield corals from the sun and heat.

The 5m by 5m pieces of cloth - four of them - have been spread over the corals at Agincourt reef for the past three summers.

The anecdotal evidence of the experiment is 'promising', says Quicksilver marine biologist Russell Hore. 'Certainly there has been no sign of bleaching under any of the shade cloths.'

Mr McKenzie also points out that more funding should go into research on practical solutions.

The father of four grown-up children, all in the tourism business, says: 'I have got an industry that is really all about going out there and showing people just how wonderful that reef is.

'I want to be able to continue doing it. I want my grandkids to be able to continue doing it, and there are things that can be done to make sure of that.'