On a remote Murray River station 60km from Wentworth in southwest NSW lies the Little Frenchman’s Creek; a 4km-long oasis for a threatened but tenacious little native critter – the Murray hardyhead. The story of this population of threatened fish begins in 2018 with only around 800 individuals relocated to the creek from a South Australian Riverland wetland where a natural population is cared for.
Fast forward to 2022, and these little guys have been detected in the 100,000’s! Helped along by consecutive years of environmental flows, productivity in the Murray River channel has been ‘booming’ in 2021 and 2022. When flows temporarily jumped overbank into the Little Frenchman’s Creek earlier this year because of wetter conditions, Murray hardyhead cashed in on the extra nutrients and multiplied over summer at an incredible rate.
High flows and increased river connectivity across parts of the Lower Murray floodplain may have also allowed dispersal of Murray hardyhead into neighbouring creeks and wetlands.
Find out more about NSW DPI’s current Murray hardyhead projects and stay in touch with the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder on Facebook and Twitter.
