Cattle versus Ducks down in The Marshes

NSW Water Minister, Nathan Rees, has allocated $400,000 to conduct an audit of water diversion structures in the Macquarie Marshes, north of Warren.

This move follows the release of a report by Professor Richard Kingsford from the University of NSW suggesting the illegal diversion send environmental water in the Macquarie River system to cattle pastures instead of key bird breeding areas.

Some upstream irrigators -- the people most targeted in the publicity of the report's release -- have been trying to draw government attention to this water diversion issue for years.  Their claims were mostly ignored before Professor Kingsford report.

The Macquarie Marshes is a large non-terminal wetland covering about 200,000 hectares.  Most of this area (88 percent) is privately owned and grazed.

There are two publicly-owned nature reserves where cattle are excluded and which are Ramsar-listed, meaning they are considered of international importance for migratory bird species.

It will be good if the issue of levee banks within the Macquarie Marshes depriving the nature reserves of water is tackled.

In the past, a lot of environmental water flow, which should have made it to the northern nature reserve in particular, was instead used to fatten cattle on private land.

I am not opposed to grazing within the marshes, but there needs to be some balance between downstream grazing, upstream irrigation and the protection of important wetlands.

Last year I published a monograph on the ecological history of the Macquarie Marshes.  It explains buying environmental water flow is an expensive option when it comes to saving the marshes and will not solve the problems without the removal of the levee banks and diversions impacting on the nature reserves.

It also outlined the need for the construction of effective erosion control structures and investigations into the salinity problems of the North Marsh.

A lot of public money is already available for wetland conservation including $26.8 million as part of a "Wetland Recovery Program", $105 million under the "Riverbank Program" and $72 million to purchase water.

But of course, all the money in the world will not improve the situation in the marshes if it is wasted on audits, plans and more plans.

I hope it is not too long before a bulldozer or two starts removing some of the levees which currently prevent environmental flow water reaching the nature reserves.

After all, and with the recent good rains, there should be enough water to promote both fat ducks and fat cattle.

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