Future, if the marshes never dried out, then why is the North marsh dotted with wells all developed in the early 1900's? Why also did many of the early explorers livestock almost perish due to lack of water in the marshes? This is an ephemeral wetland with a very strong wetting and drying cycle.
Brolga

I'm interested in the 50% figure - that 50% of wetlands have been destroyed. What regions does this figure relate to?

Slightly off topic, but, I know that there are a lot more watering points now, than there were before European settlement, across Australia's rangelands because of dams and pumping from aquifers and ground water. So when some properties are declared national park the first thing is to destroy the dam because while brumbies, for example, need continual access to water, bilbies don't.

Jennifer and Brolga,

One of the references used (Kingsford, R and Auld, K (2003) Waterbird breeding in the Macquarie Marshes - a guide to river health, NSW Nat Parks & Wildlife Service.) states that:
“ Between 10,000 and 300,000 adult waterbirds rely on the Macquarie Marshes each season for their breeding, feeding and habitat requirements”
“Centrally, there are permanent and semi-permanent lagoons…”

Criteria 4 of the Ransar Convention listing is ’providing refuge in adverse conditions’. Macquarie Marshes is considered to be an important drought refuge when many other inland wetlands have dried out.

The birds don’t just breed in major flood events such as the 15 in the 50 years between 1900 and 1950 that Jennifer refers to.

This was demonstrated in the last season when a small Straw-necked Ibis breeding happened in the Low Bidgee and in the Lachlan.

The Low Bidgee event was successful because the irrigation community agreed to let the first high flow of a supplementary event to flow onto the birds before pumping. The Lachlan event was a small flush through a tributary. A stock & domestic user agreed to leave a weir pool full until the birds finished off. Neither of these were major flood events – just the right conditions and water for the right length of time.

It’s a pity this type of co-operation couldn’t occur in the Macquarie instead of different industries being pitted against each other. Articles such as Jennifer’s opinion piece do not help the situation.

Future

Future
You are right it would be great if we could have some cooperative problem solving in the Macquarie Valley. Unfortunately we've had years of "good grazier- bad irrigator" media campaigning by some waterbird scientists that have derailed the cooperative water sharing process. These waterbird scientists appear to be completely unaware of the diversions, channels and levees in the Marshes that Jennifer has brought to light.
Ludicrously the graziers have been able to convince conservationists and waterbird scientists that environmental water should go to private property at the expense of the Nature Reserves.
The irrigators, and some enlightened jounalists such as Jennifer, are the only ones defending the Nature Reserves and insisting that they be looked after.
Brolga

Brolga,
The Nature Reserves are only 10% of the Marsh area. I agree they have been degraded through lack of good flooding. The reasons are many and varied. But the private land is also extremely important in the wetland system as a whole.
There are some current projects studying the levee systems in the Marshes. Hopefully the reports will be available soon with some useful recommendations.
There have been some major decisions on water management and allocation announcements during the period of the 1996 Water Management Plan that denied the Marshes their rightful water share.
That is why they became so unseasonably dry prior to this drought of record.
The rules around the environment allocation are still very tight and restrict the ability to be truly adaptive in the management of the share.
There wouldn't be adverse media about the condition of the Marshes if they were in better shape.
It was the irrigation community that fought very publicly to prevent the 96 Plan from being implemented. The Water Sharing Plan has been a step backward in relation to environmental water share.
This significant wetland deserves more sophisticated consideration than has occurred to date.
Future

Future,
I was wondering whether you think anything should be done about the potential for overgrazing as evident in the two photographs (taken in 2002 and 2005) that you can link to from the following blog piece: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000958.html ?