The Murray Darling Basin

When ReRu team members Dean and Michelle visited the Murray Darling Basin area, record breaking rains and floods across Australia’s Eastern seaboard states over summer had delivered cotton growers the water required for bumper crops and Australian cotton producers werer on target to produce the single largest cotton yield in history. In the cotton district of Wee Waa, in the north west of N.S.W, cotton growers were taking advantage of favourable weather conditions and are running the harvest at full tilt.  Australian cotton is regarded worldwide as superior in quality and some 98% of all cotton harvested is exported overseas. At the times, there were only weeks remaining before the Murray Darling Basin Authority is set to release its blueprint for the management of the river systems. Environmentalists and graziers down stream were concerned that water allocations for the health of the rivers were coming second to the interests of the large irrigators such as the cotton industry, and that the environmental flows to be allocated back to the river and the down-stream areas would not be enough to preserve the system when drought inevitably happens again.

ReRu worked with The Wilderness Society on their campaign to help save the life blood of Australia’s river system. Their vision for  the Murray-Darling Basin is one of a healthy river system which strikes the right balance between robust ecosystems and supporting sustainable agriculture.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan in draft form developed by the Federal Government was slated to cost $10 billion in taxes, yet fails to ensure the future of this irreplaceable natural asset. That’s $441.50 that every single Australian will be contributing.

Dean and Michelle travelled with a campaigner on a documentation tour to meet the people affected and show the threats and what is to be lost. They also produced a powerful campaign video to highlight this and aid The Wilderness Society’s campaign by distributing the story through the international wires both broadcast TV and print.

Read the summary article Let the Murray Darling River Flow by Wilderness Society (October 2013) for more about this ecosytem.