Widespread flooding across the Lake Eyre and Murray-Darling Basins this year has rejuvenated rivers and wetlands and produced an explosion of waterbird breeding, one of Australia’s longest-running wildlife surveys has found.

Close to a million waterbirds were counted in the annual aerial survey of their numbers across eastern and central Australia, taking in a third of the continent.

The tally was the third-highest recorded in the 29 years of the survey’s history and the richness of breeding species was also high, with 22 species including black swan, Pacific black duck, Australasian shoveler, chestnut and grey teal, hardhead, freckled duck and plumed whistling-duck and Australian shelduck.

Each October since 1983 waterbirds are regularly counted across 10 survey bands, each 30 km wide, that extend from the coast of eastern Australia to the Northern Territory border and from the Whitsunday Islands in Queensland to south of Melbourne.

“This year has revealed an exciting surprise,” says Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the Australian Wetlands and Rivers Centre at the University of New South Wales, who runs the survey. “We have seen a response that we thought might never happen again.”

Earlier surveys have regularly shown a long-term decline since 1983, but now overall bird numbers have bounced back, well above the long-term average.

“We haven’t reached the previous heights of the early 1980s but this result highlights the importance of a series of floods over a large part of the continent and environmental flows” says Kingsford. “The 2010 survey was already showing signs of some recovery with waterbird numbers rising above the long-term trend and widespread breeding of waterbirds. Like many plants and animals, reproduction and recruitment of waterbirds coincides with widespread flooding on rivers.”

“We are increasingly realising that waterbirds can reflect what is going on in rivers” says Kingsford. “We can look at fish populations by monitoring the cormorants and pelicans or look at invertebrates by surveying the invertebrate feeders, such as pink-eared ducks, or vegetation by investigating herbivores such as swans”.

The survey also assesses the flooding of each of up to 2,000 wetlands to provide a long-term index of wetland flooding across eastern Australia. As with the waterbirds, the index has shown a recent positive response to the widespread flooding, rising above the long-term average for the first time since 1990.

More flooding has continued to occur since completion of aerial surveys across some river systems, increasing wetland habitat available in inland areas, particularly the northern part of the Murray-Darling Basin.  Wetland habitat was again extensive in the Cooper Creek Catchment as well as the Diamantina and Georgina river systems. Lake Eyre was drying and supported few waterbirds. Wetlands on the lower Cooper Creek held water for the second consecutive year, with extensive flooding.

Throughout the Murray-Darling Basin, many of the large wetlands areas had water. This included widespread waterbird habitat on the Paroo River, including the Paroo overflow lakes, Cuttaburra channels, Macquarie Marshes, Lowbidgee wetlands and Menindee Lakes. Similarly, there were relatively large flooded areas throughout Victoria and South Australia

The surveys, among the longest and more important for the rivers in Australia, demonstrate the importance of collecting long-term data. Without such information, comparisons would be impossible: “We just would not know how we were travelling,” says Kingsford.

“Importantly, this result coincides with the release of the Murray-Darling Basin plan, aimed at returning some of the flooding of rivers that has been reduced considerably by building of dams and extractions”. The survey is funded jointly by the eastern States and the Commonwealth governments. The result will this week be presented to wildlife authorities in each of the states.

Media contact – Richard Kingsford 0419 634 215 r.kingsford@unsw.edu.au

See link for summary of the 2011 Eastern Australian Waterbird Aerial Survey

Eastern Australia_waterbird aerial survey_2011

A major new scientific review, involving more than 30 scientists from Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands sets out our current knowledge of the impacts of climate change on biodiversity in the latest special edition of the scientific journal Pacific Conservation Biology (Vol.  17, Issue 3). The special issue, launched today at the International Conference for Conservation Biologists in Auckland, also presents options for governments managing complex ecosystems in the face of the threat from climate change.

One of the two main editors, Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of Australian Wetlands and Rivers Centre at the University of New South Wales says: “Biodiversity in our region is already severely impacted by habitat loss, pollution, feral animals and weeds and overharvesting. Climate change impacts just make these problems much worse”.

Eight scientific reviews focus on current scientific understanding of climate change in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands and also how this varies on land, sea and freshwater environments. Not unsurprisingly, all papers identify temperature rise and sea level rise as having considerable impacts on biodiversity. “People and their environments on Pacific Islands have been in the vanguard of global impacts of climate change and this is predicted to worsen as sea levels rise. Beach nesting turtles and seabirds and freshwater wetlands are particularly vulnerable” says Kingsford.

The other editor, Dr James Watson of the Wildlife Conservation Society and President of the Oceania Board of the Society for Conservation Biology, warns that climate change impacts affect land, marine and freshwater environments in many different ways. “Temperature rises on terrestrial environments are going to change where animals and plants can live in the future, with some species particularly vulnerable to extreme temperatures,” Dr Watson says. “In marine systems, sea level rise and the impacts of temperature and acidification on coral reef systems are of particular concern. Our freshwater rivers and wetlands are also extremely vulnerable to rising temperatures and changes to rainfall beyond the tolerances of many different organisms.”

The consequences of climate change are inevitable, given the lack of effective global initiatives to limit greenhouse gases and so all the papers also canvas adaptation options for environments and governments, according to Kingsford. “There are some obvious things we can do” he says. “If we stopped unsustainable practices – such as developing rivers, clearing vegetation and destroying marine habitats – we would make for much more resilient environments.”

Dr Watson says there are many ways of effectively planning for the future: “We should be increasing our national park areas, connecting fragmented parts of the landscape and restoring degraded habitats. For some iconic plants and animals, we may even have to translocate them from places where their tolerances are exceeded.”

The special issue of the journal provides a clear signal to Oceania region governments and communities about the pressing impacts of climate change on biodiversity and the challenges it presents, says Kingsford. “There are opportunities to mitigate some of these impacts but it requires planning now, not when future generations inherit the problem.”

Contact: Richard Kingsford, James Watson – (+64) 9 363 7090, +61419634215, To access the synthesis for the special issue,  visit – http://pcb.murdoch.edu.au/

Press Release Climate Change