What’s Happening 10 Years On From The Basin Plan
It’s been ten years since the Murray-Darling Basin Plan started and it’s a plan that hasn’t been without its controversies.
But recently scientists have been sharing amazing scenes which show the wonders the plan has done for the environment.
The Murray Darling Basin and The Plan
The Murray-Darling Basin is the most complex river in Australia and it covers roughly 1 million square kilometres of the southeast of Australia through NSW, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and the ACT.
But the Murray-Darling’s riverbeds and wetlands began completely drying up during what’s now known as the Millennium Drought.
Michele Groat from the Commonwealth Environmental Water Office has been working on theMurray-Darling’s recovery and said, “so many of the rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin have been really altered through regulation and building dams, so that we can provide reliable water source for our towns and for food production through irrigation, it’s actually changed the natural patterns of the way the river flows and, that’s affected survival and the health of, the species that depend on it.”
In 2012 the government put the Murray-Darling Basin Plan into place and it was originally a $13 billion dollar plan to bring the Basin back to a healthier and sustainable level.
Ever since then the Commonwealth Environment Water Office has been delivering water back from irrigation sectors and flooded areas to the areas where it’s needed most.
“I work really closely with the local community, traditional owners, scientists, and other government agencies and water managers to actually coordinate, getting environmental water on the ground. We manage about four Sydney Harbour’s worth of water.In the last six years, we’ve actually put water down 28,000 kilometres of rivers and creeks. We’ve supported over a million water birds” Groat said.
When speaking on her highlights of the program she mentioned Gayini, which was a government purchase of a lot of land out west of Hay and it’s now owned and run by the Nari Nari tribe. It’s also where most of our big bird breed events in the Murrumbidgee now happen.
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Ecologists and scientists have been working to secure the survival of the next generation of waterbirds and ecosystems.
The heavier rainfall we’ve had from two consecutive La Niña summers has really helped that conservation and so has receiving specifically-allocated environmental water.
Dr Heather McGinness from the CSIRO said “there have been breeding events where if we hadn’t had environmental water from the Murray-Darling Basin Plan going into those sites, those birds would’ve failed in their breeding.”
“Part of the reason for that is a lot of these species are very observant and sensitive about what’s going on with water, because they’re so dependent on water to get their food, to feed their chicks and also on water to protect their nests. So, if water levels start to drop, they’ll abandon their nests and their chicks and their eggs because they know they won’t make it through.”
Criticisms Of The Plan
The Murray-Darling Basin Plan has attracted a lot of criticism during its lifetime.
Redirecting water for environmental restoration came at a cost for a lot of farmers, particularly in the Riverina Murray region because as much as we like to think of water as abundant, sadly it’s a finite resource.
Last year, it was announced that no more water would be taken from farms to go to the environment after the federal water minister said that that part of the policy had been a failure.
But in recent years the link between willing farmers and scientists working on the ground has strengthened, as Grot shared, ” I think probably the most important change I’ve seen is the change in community attitude. I think we’ve all realised that, you know, we get much better outcomes if we work together and, the environment and, and irrigated agriculture does much better when we do, do that.”