It's been marvellous weather for native ducks - shovelers, teals, hardheads, freckled, black, plumed, pink-eared, Pacific, wood and whistling - right across the Murray-Darling Basin this year.
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One of Australia's longest running wildlife surveys shows record rains and flooding have brought the basin's drought-parched rivers and wetlands back to life, triggering a dramatic increase in waterbird breeding.
![Like ducks to water: record breeding season Like ducks to water: record breeding season](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/silverstone-ct-migration/f6c4b004-1468-4990-bac2-43f48354d809.jpg/r0_0_729_486_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
University of NSW freshwater ecologist Professor Richard Kingsford said, ''The birds are back in large numbers, and it's a wonderful sight.''
Just less than a million native waterbirds have been counted in an annual aerial census that takes in half the continent. The survey's area extends from the Whitsunday Islands in Queensland, along the eastern coast to south of Melbourne and inland as far as the Northern Territory and South Australian borders.
Wetlands that form part of the October survey include the Paroo river, Macquarie Marshes, Lowbidgee wetlands, Menindee Lakes, Cuttaburra channels, Lake Eyre and the Diamantina and Georgina river systems.
''We've seen a huge recruitment pulse as a result of the rains, a bounce-back in numbers that we feared might not happen again. It's an exciting result,'' Professor Kingsford said.
Flying low over wetlands in a light aircraft, counting and recording bird numbers - and species - for hundreds of kilometres at a stretch is visually demanding work. Now in its 29th year, Professor Kingsford's annual waterbird count is a highlight of Australia's ecological research calendar and tends to set the agenda for debate over the ecological health of the basin's wetlands. It's a massive undertaking, involving flights across 10 survey areas, each around 30km wide. The survey also assesses the water levels of 2000 wetlands, providing rare long-term data on wetland flooding across eastern Australia. This year, after more than a decade of severe drought, the wetlands flood index has risen above the long-term average for the first time since 1990.
Professor Kingsford said this year's waterbird tally was the third-highest in the survey's history. The diversity of breeding species was also above average, with 22 species recorded, including black swans, glossy ibis, spoonbills, cormorants, pelicans, and native ducks.
Earlier surveys have shown a long-term decline in waterbird numbers since 1983, linked to drought and over-allocation of water from the basin's river systems.
''We haven't seen a resurgence of the high numbers we had in the early 1980s, but this year's result does highlight the importance of floods and environmental flows'' Professor Kingsford said.
But the survey is one of Australia's few long-term environmental monitoring programs. Last week, the federal State of Environment report warned Australia lacked adequate long-term scientific data to deliver effective environment policies and track their impact. The report, published every five years, provides a critical assessment of the nation's current and future environment challenges.
''If you don't have long-term monitoring data, comparisons are impossible. You're looking at snippets of information, trying to piece fragments together,'' Professor Kingsford said.