River floodplain wetlands provide critical waterbird habitats, however the quality and availability of these sites are influenced by our water and vegetation management decisions. Protecting and maintaining suitable feeding and nesting habitats both between and during rain and flood events is essential to maximise waterbird recruitment, maintain populations, and conserve biodiversity. This requires careful management of both vegetation and water regimes at a range of scales.
The use of valuable ‘environmental water’ within the Murray-Darling Basin has often been focused on supporting completion of waterbird breeding events. However managers and policy-makers are becoming increasingly conscious of the need to also manage feeding sites at Basin scales. Appropriately managing environmental water placement is critical to facilitating the recruitment of juvenile birds into waterbird populations. Yet we lack basic knowledge of how water flows interact with other factors such as predation, weather extremes and food abundance to influence recruitment. We also lack knowledge of the movements of adults and young during and between breeding events – where do they go, and why? Filling these knowledge gaps is key to improving the efficiency of environmental water management – applying water to the right places at the right times – and ensuring the success of future breeding events and waterbird recruitment.
The Waterbird Theme of the Murray-Darling Basin Environmental Water Knowledge and Research Project (MDB EWKR) has begun filling these knowledge gaps. By quantifying survival rates, movements, and their drivers using innovative modern technology such as GPS satellite tracking, it is assisting managers to identify key waterbird habitats and gain a better understanding of the scales at which habitats and environmental flows are required to support waterbird recruitment. The Theme is a collaboration between the CSIRO, University of NSW and University of Canberra, funded by the Australian Government’s Commonwealth Environmental Water Office.