Monitoring responses of Australasian bitterns to water for the environment in the New South Wales Murray-Darling Basin

The following abstract is part of the Bringing Back the Bunyip Bird Australasian Bittern Conservation Summit (Leeton, 1-4 Feb, 2022).

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Jen Spencer, NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment – Environment, Energy and Science Group,Jennifer.Spencer@environment.nsw.gov.au

Herring, M. ², Borrell, A. ³, Waudby, H.¹, Parker, D.¹, Amos, C.¹, Walcott, A.¹, Hosking, T.¹, Maguire, J.¹, Conallin, A.¹, Childs, P.¹, Dyer, J.¹, Preston, D.¹, Carnegie, M.⁴, Lenehan, J.¹, and McGrath, N.¹

¹NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment – Environment, Energy and Science Group, ²Murray Wildlife, ³Murray-Darling Wetlands Working Group, ⁴Lake Cowal Foundation

The Department of Planning, Industry and Environment Environment, Energy and Science (EES) Group manages a portfolio of environmental water held by the NSW Government (NSW Water for the Environment Program) and water on behalf of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder.

Annual watering objectives include the provision of habitat for waterbirds, including threatened species in critical wetland complexes in the NSW Murray-Darling Basin. These systems include floodplain wetlands in the Gwydir Wetlands, Macquarie Marshes, Lower Lachlan and Lowbidgee Floodplain. All of these systems support the Endangered Australasian bittern and a diversity of other waterbird species.

EES and partners undertake annual spring ground surveys in these wetland systems to inform water management and document the outcomes of water delivery. Australasian bitterns were detected at 18 separate wetland sites over the 2012-2021 period during the annual spring ground surveys.

Targeted bittern monitoring was also completed in Yanga National Park and surrounding private wetlands in the 2018-2022 period with funding from the Water for the Environment Program, complementing bittern monitoring in the neighbouring Gayini Wetlands (funded through the NSW Government’s Saving our Species Program) and Barmah-Millewa bittern surveys (funded by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority’s The Living Murray Program).

The distribution of bitterns and their responses to environmental watering are also currently being explored by examining acoustic data collected through the targeted Saving our Species southern bell frog project. This project has grown from its inception in 2017 to provide coverage for 65 wetland sites across the NSW Murray and Murrumbidgee catchments.

A further 20 bell frog acoustic monitoring sites were also recently established in the Great Cumbung Swamp and neighbouring wetlands after the detection of southern bell frogs and Australasian bitterns in EES spring 2020 and spring 2021 ground surveys.

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