‘Consider damming the Adelaide River’

THERE is a lot of rhetoric about building dams in Australia. It goes on and on, but nothing happens.

It reminds me of when big projects were happening around this nation every year.

Two dams in the Territory from that era get very little recognition but they are important to wildlife today. They are off river impoundments and they stand on the Adelaide River floodplain. They were built to sustain a project that failed but the dams remained to become some of the most important habitat for waterfowl and the wetland ecology in the region.

An off-river reservoir is in the early stages of an environmental impact study. The Commonwealth Government has committed $2 million to the feasibility of such a dam. Last week there were stories of 80cm barra dying in Harrison Dam as it receded. Harrison receding to these levels is a rare occurrence but it shows it is a nursery and impoundment for fish, not just a haven for geese.

Imagine if we harnessed flood water flows off the Adelaide River, regarded as the poorest performing barra river, and siphoned it into off river storages.

Agriculture and horticulture could expand, geese would thrive, ducks would breed up, bait would be available and the barra nursery could send new young fish into a barren Adelaide River down fish ladders every season.

NT Field and Game members build nest boxes for black duck and grey teal in a heartbeat. Shallow shorelines and islands of this impoundment could be sown to wild rice and eleocharis to replicate normal fish and goose habitat.

Territorians need to think out of the box and consider that there is a lot of new technology that can be applied to dams before they say this project will be another MurrayDarling disaster. This could be the best thing to happen to goose hunting since Harrison Dam.

There is a 50 target Simulated Field clay target shoot this morning at NT Field and Game range. The range is also open for practice every Friday afternoon and some Sunday mornings.