Basin ecological landscapes

At a time when the Federal Government seeks to amend the plan to give effect to election promises to South Australia, Jane’s analysis will canvas what the plan has achieved already in the long history of resource management in the basin.

She explores the shortcomings of a political compromise on ‘a number’ for water recovery, when what is really required is a nuanced approach to securing the original ambitions for the plan.

In this sixth article in the series, Jane explores her favourite parts of Victoria – the catchments and waterways of northern Victoria that make up the southern-connected parts of the Murray-Darling Basin.

BASIN ECOLOGICAL LANDSCAPES

Last week we talked about how modified the catchments and waterways of northern Victoria are, and how many of our big regulated rivers are working hard to provide us with a range of values and services.

Now I want to share with you the values that ecological systems provide us and why we work so hard and invest so much in protecting and rehabilitating our catchments and waterway landscapes.

Given this is my favourite bit, the bits I studied in my parks course and the bits I have spent most of my working life in, you might ask why is this one of the last articles in the series?

Well, because so much of this topic is covered by public commentary.

When we get journalists, advocates, politicians and other commentators out into our catchments, local managers don’t tend to take you to problem areas.

These are the areas where we have been trying to get responses and haven’t yet (but haven’t given up, in some instances, and we are minimising impacts in others).

Where we take you is to the places where there have been changes in conditions because of work we have done by planning, acting and regulating.

While it makes sense to take you to places that will make you care, we may have inadvertently given the impression that the system is close to natural, that our everyday activities haven’t impacted their survival and that we can improve every part of the landscape.

That’s why I’ve started with the parts of the public narrative that I consider warped and out of perspective.

I want to describe for you the remnant parts, the highest value parts and the way we protect, enhance and build on these values.

Did you know that there are 16 wetlands of international significance, supporting 25 internationally significant waterbirds in the Murray-Darling Basin?

Our public estate of national parks, state and regional parks and reserves along our rivers and roads are the unsung heroes of catchment management.

They help our understanding of local ecological vegetation types and are places where plants and animals thrive. This can be because of the structure of the landscape, with a diversity of flora and fauna that continue to live there and the size of these areas which haven’t suffered significant changes. A buffer if you will.

Okay, I know there are also important parts of the system on private property and obviously the whole of the catchment needs to be involved in rehabilitating our waterways.

It’s more that our approach has been a precautionary one, understanding where remnant landscapes are in good nick and trying to keep it that way, because we know how much work and costs are involved in fixing it once its broke.

These sites, areas and landscapes do have many of the components of healthy waterways but the problem we have is one of scale.

So, while there are parts of the Ovens, Mitta Mitta or the Kiewa rivers in the upper Murray that are in good condition, when you look at the whole catchment, there are too many areas that have been changed considerably.

There are areas that will never be in good condition compared to what was once there. And before you point to agriculture – although of course there was a lot of clearing of the vegetation that waterways require if they are to remain in good condition – it is also urban areas that have had a significant impact.

Our urban landscapes, besides often being on the very places where waterways need their habitat to be thriving, often have their community flood risk managed by straightening streambeds or erecting levees along the banks of the waterway.

This is the catchment manger conundrum – how do we balance up uses, target areas of most response and set realistic targets for changes in condition in waterway health despite people living in the landscape?

Did you know that flows in our waterways is only one component of waterway health?

I’m sure you could tell me that when you sit by the bank of your favourite waterway that the water flowing past, the banks forming the river channel, as well as the tree you’re sitting under on the verge and maybe a bird, skink or fish jumping in the water are all important to the health of a river.

Some of the stuff you can’t see is also important, including the quality of the water itself or the submerged homes for water-dependent bugs and fish.

Catchment managers use a dashboard of key indicators that tell them about the health of the whole catchment. They use different sciences to inform them how the overall functions of landscapes or ecosystems can be detected, monitored and rehabilitated.

So while hydrology, or the science behind the interactions of water flow, is definitely an important part of waterway health, without any work on the other parts, it is unlikely that the condition of our waterways will be improved.

As the Sustainable Rivers Audit SRA succinctly tells us “The ‘ecosystem’ includes the flora and fauna and their habitats, linkages between the river and its catchment, the dynamics of water flow and the transport and transformation of nutrients.”

These linkages are a way of talking about land use in our catchments and how transport from waterways and to waterways can have massive implications.

The urban environments that many rivers run through have been straightened, silted up and acquired increased nutrients. Extra flow will dilute and move silt, but at the cost of flooding communities.

And in case your first thought is to move these communities (a suggestion I read recently), I’m actually describing Melbourne’s waterways as well.

The reality is, people reside in water landscapes and we need to balance up the values waterways provide with their condition.

Getting our waterways into the condition they were in when First Nations lived beside them for thousands of generations is not possible, so what is?

Did you know that the flow targets in the Guide to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, instead of using ‘best available science’, ended up having to use the rule of thumb?

This is one of the biggest myths of the basin plan – that the water recovery targets agreed to were based on incontestable science. In fact, the targets were far away from what the science says the catchment needs to be restored.

I hope I’ve convinced you of the grave mistake in simply investing in water recovery and hoping for the best.

What is known behind the scenes in both the basin states’ and the Commonwealth’s departments is that, despite outlining some elegant methodology, on page 300 of volume two of the guide, it is revealed that another approach was used – in the end, the Murray-Darling Basin Authority could not actually use that methodology and instead went with a rule of thumb judgment, concluding that the Murray River required almost three-quarters of its pre-Colonial flow.

To be able to restore those flows, we would need to decommission a big storage, because that is where much of the water needed to meet the target is being stored.

Being realistic about what we are facing is an important part of catchment management. This means not only understanding the system you are trying to change but also having a plan for what a post-Colonial healthy waterway looks like. This is tricky stuff.

Did you know we have been using infrastructure to get environmental outcomes for more than 20 years?

The first step of the Living Murray program – launched in 2002 – pioneered an approach to delivering water to some of our black box and river red gum landscapes that were dying because we couldn’t reach parts of the system anymore.

As we’ve explored in previous yarns, some of our most significant remnant water-dependent landscapes have been disconnected from the river and there was early recognition that the 500 Gl recovered under the program couldn’t be used unless you had pumps and regulators to get it out there.

Celebrating 20 years, the program has achieved some important environmental outcomes for vegetation, fish and birds.

And the next step is the work we have done in putting pumps and regulators in the next tier of important sites that are difficult to deliver water into without increasing community flood risk.

These important sites are mostly within the public estate like the northern lake within Hattah Lakes, further west at Lindsay Island, as well as Nyah and Vinifera forests near Swan Hill.

Changes to river operation rules is also a critical part of getting environmental outcomes.

Assessments of flood risk are being done, particularly where the water floods the most valuable parts of the floodplain.

It is important for river operators like the Murray-Darling Basin Authority to do due diligence on any third-party impacts that delivering environmental water would cause.

For instance, the last couple of spring flushes down the Goulburn River have been maximised by recent operational adjustments made at the Torrumbarry Weir. Lifting the current protocol was deemed safe because it was the public estate that flooded and not properties.

This would have been even more effective if the infrastructure had been built already and allowed catchment managers to hold the three weeks of watering on the floodplain or topped it up with extra water, creating a flood of timing and magnitude more suited to the forest vegetation.

Creating conditions to thrive

So you can see from this and the last yarn that catchment managers have quite the task!

Having to be consistent and persistent in these positive activities at a scale that we know gets responses, and at the same time being able to communicate the landscape applications of what they are doing.

You can also see the importance of monitoring what we are doing – if you don’t have a clear picture of the current condition of the waterways, then it can be easy to throw your arms up, or place all your bets on a silver bullet.

Instead, brave catchment managers stay the course, document their intent and their achievements and monitor for changes in their approach as they go.

We all have a stake in improving the health of our waterways for obvious reasons – we need water for everyday life, and everyone wants to live near waterways that they can camp on, fish in and walk by.

As our waterways deteriorate in quality, we pay more for water quality treatment and, when it comes to salinity and algal blooms, there comes a time where no amount of money can reverse the impacts.

But we also need healthy waterways in their own right, because they have social and cultural value in our communities.

Having water in the landscape is as important as the air we breathe.

Community surveys across Victoria confirm that we care a great deal, with more than 80 per cent of respondents saying they cared about waterways specifically and more than 90 per cent caring about the environment generally.

NEXT: Jane discusses the new ‘agreement’.

About the author

Jane Ryan — a former school captain at Notre Dame College in Shepparton — was deputy chief of staff to former Victorian Water Minister Lisa Neville, and has worked in senior roles in water resources and catchment management, including Director of Rural Water Policy and Programs, Strategic Engagement Manager for River Health and Consultation Manager for the Northern Region Sustainable Water Strategy.

During the millennium drought, Jane was involved in the development of the key water policies that remain the cornerstone of water management in northern Victoria, including environmental water recovery targets, carryover arrangements and changes to allocation water policy for the Goulburn and Murray systems in response to climate change.