Three Pressing Issues for the Macquarie Marshes

It was good to see Professor John Quiggin drawing attention to the problems with the Macquarie Marshes in his post of last Sunday titled ‘Macquarie Marshes again’.

But it’s a pity he can’t get beyond ad hominem attacks [1] and a pitch for his ARC fellowship, which is about trading water in the Murray Darling Basin. And it really is naive to suggest, as Professor Quiggin does, that we can “restore the Murray-Darling Basin to a sustainable balance” simply by taking water from irrigators.

Putting aside the question of whether environments are ever in ‘balance’, there are three particularly pressing issues for the Macquarie Marshes:
1. Getting water to the nature reserve including for the reed beds,
2. Preventing the trampling of bird nesting sites by cattle, and
3. Addressing the general issues of overgrazing.

The Macquarie Marshes is a large non-termial wetland in central western New South Wales 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 is reasonable to assume that water taken from irrigators for environmental flow purposes will be directed first to these nature reserves. Yet both local graziers and upstream irrigators have sent me photographs and letters complaining that water is being directed away from the nature reserves to private land.

Following is a satellite photograph with the green area showing where the marshes flooded in December 1999. The yellow line shows the boundary of the southern nature reserve. It is evident from this photograph that something is blocking water from flowing into the reserve. This something is a levy bank on private land that according to the NSW government has been in place for approximately 15 years [2].

As I explained in an article recently published by On Line Opinion: “The only real monitoring of the biodiversity of the marshes has been the breeding of water birds. Bird-breeding sites were first mapped in the late 1970s. At this time the major breeding colonies were along the Macquarie River and most within the nature reserve. But over the past 30 years there has been a migration east to the Terrigal-Gum Cowal wetland, which is all on private land. The last big waterbird breeding event in the marshes was in 2000, and ten of the 12 main breeding colonies were located on private land with only two in the nature reserve.”

Local graziers tell me that when the birds breed in the nature reserve they are protected from the cattle, but when they are forced to breed on heavily grazed marsh lands their nests are often trampled. Fifty years ago there were restrictions on grazing on the private land in the marshes, in particular there was a regulation stating that all rookeries for bird nesting and breeding had be completely enclosed with a sheep and cattle proof fence. There are nolonger any such conditions.

Water has apparently even been redirected from the adjacent Marra Creek system through the recent construction of an additional weir, all on the pretext the water was needed for the marshes. Marra Creek graziers have subsequently watched the water directed not to the nature reserve, but to heavily grazed private land.

Not all of the private land within the marshes is overgrazed. But there was evidence of overgrazing when I visited the marshes last October and I have been sent photographs and emails from some upstream irrigators and some local graziers explaining to me that many areas, including areas that have received recent environmental flow allocations, are severely overgrazed. Here’s one of those photographs:

The evidence would seem overwhelming that all is not well in the Macquarie Marshes and that simply taking water from upstream irrigators, as suggested by Professor Quiggin, is not going to fix the problem.

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[1] It is also somewhat amusing that Professor Quiggin could suggest I’m against the grazing industry. I grew up with buffalo and cattle at Coomalie Creek in the Northern Territory and charolais at Conondale in south east Queensland. I was awarded the Cattleman’s Union Industry Research Medal in 1991 for my work in Madagascar, and was recently invited to speak at the annual Australian Beef Industry Dinner on 11th August.

[2] The levy is pictured at my blog post of 12 April 2005 titled ‘But Reed Beds Need Water’ along with comment from government officers, click here.