Long Oral Presentation 11th Australian Stream Management Conference 2024

Visualising a better future for native fish across the Southern Murray Darling Basin. (#65)

Andrew Sharpe 1 , Brenton Zampatti 2 , Zeb Tonkin 3 , Chris Bice 4 , Nick Whiterod 5
  1. Victorian Environmental Water Holder, East Melbourne, VICTORIA, Australia
  2. Land and Water, CSIRO, Waite Campus, SA, Australia
  3. Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Arthur Rylah Institute, Heidelberg, Vic, Australia
  4. Inland Waters and Catchment Ecology, South Australian Research and Development Institute, West Beach, SA, Australia
  5. CLLMM Research Centre, Goyder Institute for Water Research, Goolwa, SA, Australia
  • In order to effectively manage waterways and ecological processes that operate across multiple catchments we need to be able to visualise what is happening at landscape scales. Many fish populations in the Southern Murray Darling Basin (SMDB) operate over very large spatial scales and while individual researchers have a good understanding of ecological processes and patterns, there are few tools that synthesise that knowledge in a format that is readily accessible to others.
  • To address this problem we held several workshops to develop maps that summarise how Murray Cod, Golden Perch, Congoli (Tupong) and Southern Pygmy Perch use the SMDB and the key factors affecting their distribution patterns.
  • The process of developing the maps stimulated conversations among workshop participants about the key factors limiting population outcomes and what we may do to improve the populations.
  • It is expected that the maps will be used and built on by researchers, managers, Traditional Owners and the broader community to have collective discussions about current native fish distributions patterns, how we would like to change those patterns over time and the key areas and actions needed across the SMDB to realise those changes.
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