November 23, 2020

The Arnold McGill Memorial Lecture Members Meeting

1 December 2020

‘Waterbirds – sentinels of rivers
under pressure’

Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the
Centre for Ecosystem Science, UNSW Sydney
Freshwater biodiversity around the world is in
long term decline. And Australia, as the driest
inhabited continent, is under extreme pressure.
We have been using waterbirds as indicators of
the pressures and trajectories of change in our
wetlands and rivers, over 38 years, 1983-2020.
I will talk about some of the major changes that
have occurred in our waterbird communities
which are indicating fundamental challenges
for environmental flow management particularly
in the Murray-Darling Basin. Contrastingly, the
waterbirds and the habitats they depend on are
still doing well in the Lake Eyre Basin. These
trajectories of change are borne out by data
from our aerial surveys of waterbirds across
eastern Australia. We have just finished our
2020 aerial surveys, despite major challenges.
These data are delivering on a range of fronts
from understanding the status of different
waterbird species, wetlands and river health
and climate change impacts, underlining
the importance of waterbirds as sentinels of
freshwater biodiversity.

View the lecture here.