Rimsky your comments are interesting. In the case of the Macquarie Marshes, all its woes have been successfully placed at the door of the irrigation industry. This despite good evidence that the South Marsh was in deep trouble long before irrigation began.
We ignore the impact of grazing because we have all grown up with it for some generations now. It would be fascinating to compare the ecological health of a river system with no irrigation, only grazing to that of a river system with no grazing, only irrigation (but we don't have the latter).
I suspect the result would astonish us!
The MDBCs recent publication "The Darling" (2004) places enormous emphasis on the impact of irrigation whilst almost ignoring the consequences of grazing, especially during droughts, on these ecosystems.

Jennifer,
Just to answer a few of your previous questions:
The 50% loss of wetlands figure came from the Revive Our Wetlands website www.reviveourwetlands.net.
Another good website is the Federal Department of Environment and Heritage which outlines the Ramsar Convention.

I do agree that over grazing needs to be managed - on any country, especially during drought conditions. If you happen to drive through the Macquarie Valley and compare the grazed country to the completely bare, laser-levelled cotton paddocks without any native vegetation on them at all - it is difficult to understand this sudden concern about grazing.

The Government allowed a major cotton development to occur within the Marshes against its own policy of the 1980's.

Between 2001 and 2005 about 1,117,000ML flowed into the Macquarie system while 1,115,000ML was extracted downstream of Burrendong by licensed users.

Even if all the private property was purchased in the Marshes to create a major Nature Reserve, there would not be enough water allocated to keep the area healthy.

The 2003 Water Sharing Plan has 160,000ML available for environmental flows only when allocation is at 100%. There is only 50% reliability of this occuring in the Macquarie Valley because of over allocation. The 1996 Plan at least had 50,000ML of high security water that was available to the environment every year.

Wetlands need water. Colonial nesting birds need water over an adequate period of time to finish a breeding event. This hasn't happened in the Marshes for 6 years. I know that a lot of Australians don’t particularly care whether we continue to have native birds and animals survive in this country. However, our Governments have signed international agreements to look after significant places like the Macquarie Marshes and this needs to be respected.
Future

Regarding the Macquarie Marshes, there will come a time when certain stick in the mud politicians will perish along with greedy farm interests, billions of dollars of wasted taxpayer money and all the public service waffle. Then people will begin to realise that rains come from coastal ocean evaporation and not from a desert nation's water mismanagement schemes.

Drought and flood are part of Australian folklore but PROLONGED droughts are clearly man made. Unless and until water management schemes promote entry of precipitation from Sth Australian coastal rain bands, by greening a desert corridor from Port Augusta through Lake Eyre and onto Broken hill to encourage those rain bands inland, this PROLONGED drought will continue to plague the nation.

People are right to suspect a climate change apocalypse. And its already here: Labor driven, Soylent Green style state governments with their X city tunnel funnels, ghost M7s and Snowy/Monsanto 'we own what you eat and drink' political-private partnerships are stripping Australia bare of natural resources for short term profits. They are subverting electoral processes and the people's right to the bounty of this nation in order to conglomerate profits into a few manageable portfolios. People no longer warrant respect and are rapidly becoming political livestock to feed markets for corporate greed, with our Judas Goat state governments leading us to the tolled slaughter.

Things can and will get better if we rid ourselves of Political-Private Partnerships and supplant them with true Public-Private Partnerships! Federal and State politicians have to stop manipulating our economy to make life easy for themselves at the expense of the community at large.

Continued ..

Continuing ..
A successful Lake Eyre based climate manipulation pilot study is needed to show how we can stop the current prolonged drought, save the big inland river systems and put power back into the hands of the people. Selling the Snowy and paying farmers to stop hogging river waters (which is a crime already) is a contradictory process to saving rivers. It merely rewards the rich as they steal more from the poor. Given public apathy in any social setting you will always get this King John and his State Premier sherrifs of Nothingham pushing both the environment and the populace to their breaking point. Since history tells us over and over where this will lead us, I think it is time we elect new governments while we can. That will put the power over the environment and human rights back with the people and avoid the inevitable revolt from both the environment and the populace.

However the first step in this process of change is for people to stop being lazy and THINK through these problems for 'yourselves'. The notion that you can trust Howard, Costello and the State Governments, all of whom have been in power for far too long is extrordinarily naive.