Can the Darling River System survive both climate change and mismanagement?

Water levels in the Darling River are notoriously irregular but decreasing rapidly. Darling River water is critical for the Murray-Darling Basin and in recent decades are even more variable. Consequences include enormous fish death numbers and severe water shortages threatening ecosystem survival, human consumption, and agriculture. Recent heavy rain episodes briefly improved water flows. However, between those episodes, water levels and quality has declined from droughts, expanded water extraction for agriculture, increased salinity, and pollution from farm pesticides and fertilisers. Occasional smaller inflows that replenished river levels are now less frequent.  

A project from Professor Lance Leslie and Dr Milton Spear from the UTS Faculty of Science focused on rainfall and water flows before and after global warming accelerated in the 1990s. Using Machine Learning (ML) techniques, they identified global and local warming, and consequent climate change, as contributing to decreased April-May rainfall, with resulting minimal or zero flow into inland southeast Australia streams and rivers feeding the Darling River. Using archived monthly Darling River heights, they found that although high and low water levels occurred before the mid-1990s, those from 2000 are the lowest on record.  

The project showed that climate change reduced water availability in the Darling River system. Ominously, waterbird populations are declining, and massive fish-kills are increasing.  Meanwhile, indigenous water rights are unmet, in numerous communities. Sustaining Darling River flow and quality requires stronger management and enforcement of local, state and federal government regulations to achieve the targets of the 2013 Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Simply put, to fulfill proposed community and environmental outcomes and to rebuild ecosystems, Darling River flow must be increased.