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The main presentation will be by Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the Australian Wetlands and Rivers Centre, University of NSW, entitled “Floods, droughts and river regulation – a waterbird story”

Australia’s waterbirds are mostly nomadic, capitalising on highly variable aquatic resources in the arid interior (70% of the continent) for feeding and breeding. Waterbirds, unlike most aquatic organisms, can move between catchments, exploiting habitat wherever it occurs. In Australia, patterns of resource availability for waterbirds are mostly pulsed with peaks of productivity, coinciding with flooding and differing in time and space, affecting individuals, species and functional groups of waterbirds. Australian waterbirds are no different to waterbirds elsewhere as their behaviour reflects broadscale resource availability. They respond to changing patterns of resource distribution with rapid movements at spatial and temporal scales commensurate with the dynamics of the resource.

The most serious conservation threat to waterbirds is a bottleneck in resource availability leading to population declines, increasingly forced by anthropogenic impacts. River regulation and other threats (e.g. draining) reduce wetland habitat availability and decrease the probability of viable resource patches. It is axiomatic that waterbirds need water and such population bottlenecks may occur when the availability of water across the continent is limited. The rehabilitation of regulated rivers with environmental flows and protection of naturally flowing rivers in the arid region is essential for long-term sustainability of Australia’s waterbird populations.

This talk explores our current understanding of waterbird ecology and the effects of water resource development on rivers and wetlands.

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