4th February 2025
The Nature Conservation Council of NSW (NCC) is today expressing profound concern and frustration following yet another mass fishkill at Menindee Lakes, where an estimated 100,000 native bony bream have perished.
This latest event underscores the Minns government's ongoing failure to protect the Darling/Baaka River, nearly three years after promising to fix the struggling river system.
The immediate cause of the fish kill appears to be the recent extreme heatwave followed by a sudden temperature drop, a combination to which the native bony bream are particularly vulnerable.
While these weather events are a trigger, the scale of the die-off points to a far deeper problem: a river system lacking the resilience to withstand such shocks. This resilience can only be achieved by ensuring adequate flows and connectivity, a solution that has been on the government's desk for years.
"To see a hundred thousand native fish dead on the banks of Menindee Lakes is heartbreaking, but it is not surprising," said Mel Gray, Inland Water Campaigner for the NCC.
"This is the predictable and predicted outcome of a river system managed to the brink of collapse.
"The Minns government has had the blueprint to restore the Darling/Baaka since the NSW Connectivity Expert Panel delivered its final report in July 2024. Their failure to act has left the river vulnerable and fragile."
The Connectivity Expert Panel report provides clear, evidence-based recommendations to restore the health of the Barwon-Darling/Baaka river system. Despite this, the government has not implemented these crucial recommendations.
This latest environmental disaster comes almost three years after Premier Chris Minns visited Menindee in the wake of a catastrophic fish kill in March 2023, when he promised the community his government would fix the river. The government's inaction since that promise was made has betrayed the trust of the community and condemned the river to further degradation.
According to the latest State of the Environment report, fish kills have tripled in the past five years and there has been over 190 fish death events since 2021.
"The Premier stood on the banks of the Darling in 2023, surrounded by millions of dead fish, and promised to do better. Nearly three years later, we are witnessing another tragedy unfold," Ms Gray said.
"The science is clear, the solutions are available. The only thing missing is the political will to stand up to powerful irrigation lobby groups and prioritise the health of our rivers."
The Nature Conservation Council of NSW calls on the Minns government to immediately begin implementing the Connectivity Expert Panel's recommendations to restore flows to the Darling/Baaka River and prevent these ecological disasters from becoming a regular occurrence.
