Mosaic Map: NRM funded projects
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site specific
region wide
Managing Kangaroo Island's rivers of life
Cygnet River immediately after heavy rain
Colin Wilson (Monitoring and Evaluation officer) undertaking water sampling
Flood gauges measuring river height
Without water nothing can survive. It's our most precious resource.
But to protect it effectively we need to understand its current health and the threats to it.
And that's exactly what the Kangaroo Island Natural Resource Management Board set out to discover with its Rivers of Life project.
“We had very little information about water quantity and quality on Kangaroo Island and how this impacted on ecosystems, industries, or human consumption,” NRM Board General Manager Jeanette Gellard said.
Jeanette said the Board wanted to measure water quality as a reference point for future assessment and to gain more information to help it engage the community in discussing freshwater management.
Funding
The Australian and State Governments provided the Board with more than $290,000 for this project. The State Government has also provided in kind support.
Activities
Jeanette said the Rivers of Life project involved extensive surveying of six catchments on the island, with the assistance of the South Australian Departments for Water, Land and Biodiversity Conservation and Environment and Heritage.
“We mapped the water courses and their condition, where the erosion problems were, where stock damage was occurring, and where salinity was becoming a problem, as well as where native species lived,” she said.
“The condition of the catchments is mostly positive, although the western end of the island is in better condition than the more developed areas.
“There are areas in the western end that represent what our waterways were like prior to European settlement. However, where it has been developed for agriculture and residential settlement, we are starting to see the impacts.”
Vegetation along Kangaroo Island's waterways was generally found to be quite good, but Jeanette said there were some areas that were starting to suffer from salinity and unstable riverbanks.
Achievements
The information gathered from the project will be invaluable to the Board in deciding where to direct future protection efforts and provides a baseline reference for undertaking risk assessment for each catchment.
Jeanette said the need to access private land during the surveys was an added benefit. “It provided a great opportunity to inform landowners about what we were doing, what the issues were, and to discuss their concerns and opportunities for helping manage these issues,” she said.
More information
- Jeanette Gellard, Kangaroo Island Natural Resources Management Board General Manager: (08) 8553 0111 or gellard.jeanette@bigpond.com
See also
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