The Living Murray Program is a joint initiative of the New South Wales, Victorian, South Australian, Australian Capital Territory and the Commonwealth governments, coordinated by the MDBA. The Living Murray Initiative was established in 2002 as a package of ‘water and works’ to improve environmental health at six icon sites along the Murray (including the channel) which were chosen for their high ecological value and cultural significance.
Through a $650 million investment, it has acquired almost 500 GL of water for the environment, and between 2011 and 2015 built a number of environmental works to help deliver this water more efficiently and effectively to sites along the River Murray. Water recovered as part of the Living Murray is used to give effect to the Basin-wide Environmental Watering Strategy and the Basin Environmental Watering Plan as well as to meet agreed ecological objectives at icon sites.
With over ten years of monitoring data this is a foundational data set that we use to track the ecological condition of some of our key environmental sites in the Southern Basin. But how can we take 80 to 100 monitoring reports each year for over ten years and track our progress in a way that a general audience can interact with?
We have developed qualitative online report cards that provide a high level summary while also layering information so that people can find their way to follow the science. The presentation will show that Living Murray sites have responded well to targeted environmental watering, lifting the combined grade for all sites from a ‘D’ in 2007-08 to a ‘B’ in 2017-18. However, there is a lot that sits below these headline grades and ecological responses are far from uniform with some areas doing better than others, and some remaining under significant environmental strain.