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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/21/all-this-here-will-kill-this-river-traditional-owners-grieve-for-the-darling-baaka-after-mass-fish-death>
"Traditional owners in Menindee are grieving for a river that smells like
death.
“The Baaka is our culture; to see the fish like this and to smell the fish is
just unbelievable,” says Malyangapa Barkandji woman Denise O’Donnell. “The
whole of Australia should be fighting for this river – all the rivers. It makes
me sick to see it like this, it makes me cry. It’s very heartbreaking. A lot of
the community feel the same and they are grieving – this is so wrong.”
It should be a time of abundance. After years of drought, the Darling-Baaka
experienced record floods in 2022, inundating properties downstream of the
Menindee Lakes and causing a fish breeding boom. But the fish – particularly
invasive carp and the native bony bream – bred too fast, choking the waterways
as flood waters receded, just as a heatwave hit the state. The dissolved oxygen
levels in the river dropped, causing a hypoxic blackwater event that saw fish
dying in their millions.
The carcasses stretch tens of kilometres along the Baaka, on a scale that
locals say surpasses the fish kills in 2019. Unlike 2019, where a significant
number of Murray Cod were lost, most of those that have died are quick-growing
bony bream.
Barkindji traditional owners say they are tired of spending their time fighting
for the health of a river system that should be a national priority.
“People fought so hard when this first happened and to see it again like this
is hurting everyone all over again,” O’Donnell says on Monday."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
