“We are undertaking a river and wetland restoration program that has never been done at this scale anywhere else in the world,” Dr Banks told delegates at the June 19 and 20 conference in Albury.
“Our monitoring and research has revealed that significant progress has been made in the past 10 years towards achieving the environmental outcomes outlined in the basin plan, but there is still an urgent need to keep going and do more.
“We need long-term and sustained action to arrest the decline in our waterbird and native fish populations.”
Dr Banks said there was a critical need to continue and increase flows travelling down the full length of rivers benefiting important wetlands at the end of rivers and valleys such as the Lower Murrumbidgee, Macquarie Marshes and Coorong, and flushing salt out of the system.
He raised concerns about the growing occurrence of Commonwealth-held environmental water being called on to mitigate emergency water quality crises in the basin — essentially taking it away from other important planned purposes.
“We all benefit from good water quality — communities, First Nations peoples, irrigators and other water users — it’s not solely an issue for environmental water managers to resolve,” Dr Banks said.
At the conference, Dr Banks announced the next phase of the CEWH’s flagship monitoring and research program, Flow-MER, would kick off from July 1.
“And with new approaches in place for greater knowledge exchange between the organisations and across all stakeholders, I look forward to even better monitoring and science outcomes and information to inform adaptive management of the Commonwealth’s water for the environment.”
As at June 2024, the Commonwealth holds 2931 gigalitres of entitlements in the Murray-Darling Basin. The long-term diversion limit equivalent is 2033 Gl.
Since 2009, the CEWH has delivered around 16,729 Gl of water to support river and wetland health, this is equivalent to 33 Sydney Harbours.
This water has been used to support more than 26,000km of waterways and more than 420,000 hectares of lakes and floodplains.
It has also supported 11 internationally significant Ramsar wetlands, large-scale waterbird breeding, survival, spawning and migration of native fish and river connectivity to the Coorong, flushing salt and mitigating poor water quality.
