Two grey teal ducks,among the species of waterbirds that have not seen a bounce in numbers despite better rains.Credit:Angus Emmott
“It’s well below the long-term average,with even fewer birds than last year,” said Richard Kingsford,head of the university's Centre for Ecosystem Science.
"All that rain that we had on the Great Dividing Range,some of it's runoff,but it’s been largely captured by the large dams and not got into the river systems,"he said.
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Only the Lachlan and Paroo rivers – systems with relatively little irrigated agriculture – were found by researchers to be faring well.
"Those two river systems were really just pulsing;they were fabulous,"Professor Kingsford said.
The surveys are conducted in the same areas at the same time each year. The aerial reviews cover 10 bands stretching east to west,each of them 30 kilometres wide,ranging from Queensland's Whitsundays in the north to a region near Melbourne.