It’s a Dry Argument: The Millennium Drought and Recovering Threatened Fishes of the Murray-Darling Basin

The Murray-Darling Basin (MDB) is the food bowl of Australia, supplying 39% of Australia’s agricultural production. As such, most rivers of the MDB are highly regulated and experience significant levels of water abstraction. Prolonged drought conditions from 1997 to 2010 (the ‘Millennium Drought’) resulted in record low inflows to storage dams and critical water shortages, exacerbating competition for finite water resources between human uses and the environment. More than half of the native species in the MDB are listed as threatened, several of which faced local extinction due to impacts associated with the Millennium Drought, necessitating a series of emergency actions to conserve populations and species. This comprised both administrative (e.g. establishment of an Emergency Contingency Fund) and on-ground actions, which included, but were not limited to, environmental watering of refuge habitats, rescues, captive breeding and translocation. The Native Fish Strategy (NFS) andrecovery plans for threatened species provided a coordinated direction for such actions, the success of which was underpinned by cross-agency and stakeholder collaboration. The conservation status of the MDB fish fauna is reviewed, along with recovery efforts and the achievements during the Millennium Drought.