Endangered Fish Causes A Stir With Farmers

October 18, 2007

Release from: Prue Bentley
ABC (Australia)

A little fish is causing a big stir in Sunraysia. The Murray Hardyhead grows about as long as your middle finger and once lived abundantly in the lakes of our region. The species is now facing possible extinction, but the solution to save the fish has irrigators enraged.

The Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) has proposed to shore up the populations of Murray Hardyhead by releasing environmental water into lakes where the fish are suffering a decline. Irrigators are alarmed at the announcement that six hundred megalitres will be flushed into Lake Cardross, Woorinen North Lake and Round Lake for the fish population. Water they say would be better served going towards keeping farms alive.

Peter Crisp, Member for Mildura is with the irrigators, and wants to see farmers as the first priority. He says, “Part of the existence of our communities along the Murray is making sure we keep… all of the agricultural industries surviving through the drought so we can be sure they’ll be there next year.”

He believes that while there should be environmental water, if the DSE was to release this water into the open market, it could fund other environmental opportunities and free up these megalitres for farming. “Let’s get more water into the market which hopefully might lower the price a bit,” he says.

In turn he believes the DSE can, “put the money in the banks and spend it on some other environmental works within the region which would help the environment but get that desperately needed water out into the market place so that people can buy it and use it to keep plantings alive.”

The question of water for the environment versus water for humans is at the heart of the controversy. Howard Jones is an irrigator and environmentalist. He sees the two hard to separate. “How do you separate the environment from humans?” he asks, “If you don’t have an environment, I thought we’re in a bit of danger too.”

He defends the right of the DSE to use its allocated environmental water for its own projects. He also believes the amount of water earmarked for release into the Lakes isn’t enough to make a dent in the current water crisis, adding, “If the water… was distributed amongst the irrigators, they should turn up to pick it up in a twenty litre drum because that’s what it’ll equate to.”

Jane Doolan is the DSE’s Executive Director of Sustainable Water and Environment. She stresses the legal importance of saving the Murray Hardyhead under both Commonwealth and State law, using an environmental entitlement. “We’ve said as a community,” says Jane, “species extinction is not something we want to contemplate and in this case we do have the means to do that.”

Scientists are predicting that another hot summer could kill off the fish altogether. If the Hardyhead becomes extinct, she says, “it will actually be the first fish extinction since European settlement, it’ll be the first vertebrate extinction since about the 1940s across Australia.”

The plan according to Jane is to block of a small part of the lake and use the water to supplement that area. The rest of the lake will then be allowed to dry. A captive breeding program will run in tandem with this project, which Jane hopes will allow more fish to be returned to habitats around Australia in the coming years.

In the meantime, many farmers continue in their determination to keep crops alive while a controversial little fish fights for its own survival in a drought that may see no relief for some time.