Everywhere on earth, wetlands are being destroyed little by little – yet they are essential to the ecological well-being of the planet.

If they disappear, life itself disappears.

World Wetlands Day celebrates the gifts that wetlands provide, underpinning human health, welfare, survival and prosperity.

Wetlands in the semi-arid Murray-Darling Basin are priceless assets.

They are essential resources on the driest inhabited continent for the continued survival and well being of the basin.

At European settlement, natural wetlands in Australia covered more than 240,000 km2.

After 250 years of water diversions, drainage and dams changing river flows and drying wetlands, less than half survive - and in high value agricultural areas as little as 1-2 per cent of the original wetlands remain!

Healthy wetlands are like Goldilocks, they need just enough water, often enough, for long enough, at the right time, and of the right quality.

If they get these conditions often enough, they will support water plants, plants around their edges, water birds, forest birds, migratory birds, native fish, crayfish and yabbies, tortoises and frogs, as well as healthy plant fringes around their edges.

Our own Macquarie Marshes have shrunk and dried by two-thirds since the advent of major flood irrigated cotton development in the catchment during the 1990s.

Since the early 1990s, the marsh area has shrunk from around 72,000 hectares to a core of approximately 20,000 hectares. If this trend continues, our Macquarie Marshes could disappear altogether, with no suitable nesting sites for waterbirds or habitat for frogs, tortoises and fish.

Continuing threats to the Macquarie Marshes include:

• Removing more water from rivers.

•Altering timing, length and frequency of flows. 

• No small or medium floods reaching wetlands and floodplains. 

• Introduced pests competing with native species and favoured by changed flows.

You can help by supporting calls for the legal protection of publically owned environmental water.

It isn’t right that public water, paid for by the tax payer to stay in rivers and wetlands to keep them healthy for the future, can be extracted legally under current water sharing plans.

Let your MP know you support a healthy and resilient Murray-Darling Basin and want the new water sharing plans due in June 2019 to ensure minimum flows for our rivers and wetlands.

Get Involved: Visit: www.eccoorange.org.au/index for more information on how you can do your part for the environment.