Every year, we focus on meeting specific environmental demands in the River Murray Valley. These priorities align to our broader environmental objectives for the region.
Environmental objectives in the River Murray Valley
Our longer-term goals in the River Murray Valley focus on supporting plants, native fish and waterbirds.
Plants
Rivers and creeks
- Maintain the health and condition of plants along the riverbanks and within channels.
- Help non-woody plants that fringe or occur within river corridors grow.
Wetlands and floodplain
- Protect and restore Ramsar wetlands including Barmah-Millewa Forest, Werai Forest, Koondrook-Perricoota Forest, Gunbower Forest, Hattah Lakes, Banrock Station, and the Riverland floodplain.
- Maintain the health and condition of floodplain plants near river channels and in low-lying areas, including Moira grass.
- Improve the condition of black box, river red gum and lignum shrublands.
- Improve tree recruitment (young small trees grow to large adults) within Black box and River red gum communities.
- Maintain and improve the health and condition of wetland plants.
End-of-system
- Support the survival, growth and recruitment of Ruppia tuberosa in the southern Coorong.
- Maintain or improve the diversity, health and condition and extent of native plants in and around the Lower Lakes.
Waterbirds
- Support the survival and growth of waterbirds by providing habitat and food resources.
- Maintain the health, condition and diversity of waterbird species.
- Support bird breeding events that are in danger of failing due dry conditions.
- Support naturally triggered bird breeding events to completion.
- Provide habitat for migratory birds to live and feed.
End-of-system
Support important waterbird species in the Lower Lakes and Coorong lagoons, including:
- Curlew sandpiper
- Greenshank
- Rednecked stint
- Sharp-tailed sandpiper.
Native fish
Rivers and creeks
- Provide flows to help native fish find habitat and food sources.
- Provide flows to ease poor water quality conditions.
- Promote increased movement, recruitment (young small fish to grow to larger adults), survival, and health and condition of native fish.
Wetlands
- Provide flow cues to help native fish move, recruit and survive, especially fish that live on floodplains.
End-of-system
Maintain or improve the diversity, health and condition and numbers of native fish by:
- providing suitable habitat conditions within the Coorong lagoons
- maintaining migration pathways that supports species breeding, survival and condition.
This includes for fish that live in estuaries and diadromous fish (fish that migrate between freshwater and seawater environments like lampreys).
Invertebrates and vertebrates
Rivers and wetlands
- Provide habitat to support increased macroinvertebrate (large invertebrates like dragon flies, mosquitoes, other insects, crustaceans and snails) survival, diversity, abundance and health and condition.
- Provide habitat to support survival, maintain healthy condition and provide breeding opportunities for other vertebrates, including frogs, turtles, platypus and reptiles.
End-of-system
- Provide suitable salinity conditions for benthic invertebrates (invertebrates that live at the bottom of lakes, streams and rivers).
Connectivity
Rivers and creeks
- Maintain baseflows (minimum flows needed) and increase overall flows in the River Murray and Edward/Kolety–Wakool.
- Maintain longitudinal and lateral connection flows to wetlands and instream habitats by helping increase the frequency of freshes, bankfull (higher flows that do not connect to the floodplain) and lowland (low-level) floodplain connecting flows.
Wetlands and floodplains
- Maintain lateral connectivity flows to wetlands, floodplains, creeks and anabranches by helping increase the frequency of low-level floodplain connecting flows.
End-of-system
- Improve connecting flows of the River Murray to the Coorong and the sea by supporting increased barrage flows.
Food webs, transport, water quality and resilience
Support key ecosystem functions, including increase:
- primary productivity (when plants convert sunlight through photosynthesis to produce food and grow)
- nutrient and carbon cycling (the exchange and movement of chemical compounds from the environment to living plants and animals and back to the environment)
- biotic dispersal and movement (the spread of native aquatic plants and animals)
- transport of organic matter (material that has come from recently living plants and animals), salt and nutrients (chemical compounds that help animals and plants live and grow) downstream.
We also aim to maintain water quality and provide refuge habitat from adverse water quality events.
About environmental objectives
Environmental goals in the River Murray Valley are based on:
- long-term environmental objectives in the Basin Plan and the Basin-wide Environmental Watering Strategy
- state long-term watering plans
- site management plans
- local ecological knowledge.
Environmental goals can change each year based on factors like:
- availability of water
- catchment conditions
- feasibility of operations
- demand for water.
We will keep updating these goals as part of our commitment to adaptive management.
Water planning
Water we plan to deliver, trade, and carry over in the River Murray Valley this water year.