Scientists winged their way across one-third of Australia to collect data for the 2022 Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey, an annual health check of our freshwater ecosystems.
Tens of thousands of breeding waterbirds, including the endangered Australasian bittern, are thriving in the culturally important Gayini (Nimmie-Caira) wetlands in south-west NSW.
Subsidised irrigators extracted up to 28 per cent more water than those who received no funds under a national Murray-Darling Basin irrigation efficiency program, a new study has found.
UNSW scientists are members of a consortium chosen by the NSW Government to restore one of the most important wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin – the Nimmie-Caira system of the Lowbidgee wetlands.
A 30-year-long UNSW study of wetlands in eastern Australia has found that construction of dams and diversion of water from the Murray-Darling Basin have led to a more than 70 percent decline in waterbird numbers.
This year’s annual waterbird survey by UNSW scientists coincides with concerns that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority is about to announce a cut to water allocations to the environment.
The dramatically changing water expanses in the Murray-Darling Basin have been mapped in unprecedented detail using Landsat satellite images from 1986 to 2011.
