Looking Back - Big Achievements of the CRC for Freshwater Ecology

Peter Cullen
Foundation Chief Executive

To me the big scientific achievements of the CRC related to the scale of our science, and the development of an experimental rather than a descriptive approach to freshwater ecology.

One of the challenges from the beginning was to develop and implement a means of assessing river health across States. While many people were expressing concern about the degradation of our aquatic systems, we had no means of doing large-scale assessments of river health.

The NSW Rivers Survey, led by John Harris and his team from NSW Fisheries, was a groundbreaking study that assessed the health of fish populations across the State. This showed that many rivers were degraded; especially the more heavily managed Southern rivers of the Murray. The AUSRIVAS tool developed by Richard Norris and his team, which used invertebrates to assess river health, gave us an independent tool to make health assessments. The ‘Snapshot’ of the Murray-Darling Basin and the River Health Assessment for the National Land and Water Resources Audit were seminal products of the CRC. These two projects, involving many CRC staff and outside collaborators, were fundamental in convincing the Australian public that further work was needed in water reform, and contributed to the current National Water Initiative.

The Campaspe experimental flow project, conceived and developed by Sam Lake and Paul Humphries, was designed to assess the environmental impacts of a particular environmental flow release pattern on a lowland river. Unfortunately, due to ongoing drought conditions during the nineties, the planned experimental releases did not occur, but nevertheless we improved our understanding of the ecology of lowland rivers considerably. Terry Hillman designed experimental projects that looked at how billabongs and rivers interacted. Other experimental work took place in the urban program where projects by Ian Lawrence and Chris Walsh contributed much to our understanding of urban streams and how urban runoff could be managed.

The CRC achieved many other outstanding projects. The dryland river refugia project of Stuart Bunn and his colleagues has improved our understanding of the waterways of the Lake Eyre Basin. The Narran Lakes project has improved our understanding of the ecology of major terminal wetlands. The major work on the River Murray led by Ben Gawne and by Keith Walker provided the foundations for much of the current restoration activity for that river.

Barry Hart, Ian Lawrence and Bill Maher made major contributions to the development of the national water quality guidelines. Many staff contributed to expert panels to identify environmental flow requirements for many rivers, and Sam Lake and John Harris contributed to the development of this approach.

In guiding the science of the CRC I must pay particular tributes to Sam Lake, Barry Hart, Stuart Bunn and Terry Hillman. They contributed broad-ranging ecological insights, a passion to make a difference, and a passion for excellent science that provided the foundation for the success of the CRC.