The key achievements of the Native Fish Strategy (NFS) include:
- approval of the strategy by the former Murray–Darling Basin Ministerial Council, followed by its release in May 2004
- establishment of the Fish Management and Science Committee (2003), which is now the NFS Implementation Working Group
- extensive community engagement, including NFS ‘Awareness Week Tours’ in 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008
- establishment of 9 demonstration reaches across the Basin (these are large-scale river reaches or wetlands where many actions are taken to improve river health and to showcase their cumulative benefit on native fish populations)
- appointment of NFS Coordinators in each state and the ACT to facilitate on-ground implementation
- providing ongoing advice on the construction and operation of fishways as part of the Sea to Hume program, which is restoring fish passage along the Murray River all the way from the sea upstream to Hume Dam (a distance of 2225 km)
- development and refinement of the award-winning Williams’ carp separation cage, to selectively trap carp for removal at fishways
- provision of major funding for the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre
- establishment of two integrated pest management exercises to control carp
- progress on several aspects of the ‘daughterless carp’ technology being developed by CSIRO, which aims to reduce the number of females in the carp population
- positive response of endangered trout cod to resnagging downstream of Yarrawonga
- eight workshops on key fish management and conservation issues
- installation of PIT (passive integrated transponder) tag readers in all new fishways (PIT tags are tiny identification chips used to track fish movements)
- trials of several new fish-counting technologies
- development of a population model for Murray cod, for use in decision making by managers
- emergency rescue responses to save various at-risk fish populations, including the last known South Australian southern purple-spotted gudgeons
- initiation and development of the Basin Alien Fish Plan.
Further information
Native Fish Strategy
Key tasks
Governance and partnerships
Key achievements
Native Fish Strategy publications
Native fish fact sheets
Alien fish fact sheets
Contacts
