Hundreds of thousands of fish died yesterday in the third mass death in recent weeks on a stretch of a major Australian river that local officials blamed on drought, but critics said at least partly stemmed from water mismanagement.
The latest deaths began overnight in the Darling River near the township of Menindee in western New South Wales (NSW) state. That is the same area where hundreds of thousands of fish were found floating dead early this month and shortly before Christmas.
Hot weather is suspected of causing algae to bloom, then cooler overnight temperatures caused the algae to die, which starved the water of oxygen.
Photo: AP
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian blamed the poor water quality on an extended drought that is gripping most of the state.
New South Wales Minister for Regional Water Niall Blair said that his department knew weather conditions were “terrible” and had deployed two solar-powered aerators in the Menindee region.
The government bought 16 aerators to deploy in waterways around the state after the last mass fish death on Jan. 6 to Jan. 7.
“Unfortunately, there’s nothing that anyone has been able to point to — no scientist, no locals, no one has been able to point to anything else that could prevent something like this other than freshwater coming into the system and we just don’t have that,” Blair told reporters.
Menindee Regional Tourist Association president Rob Gregory, who operates river cruises, said that governments had allowed farmers to take too much water from the river to irrigate over the past four years.
“Now we’ve got no reserve to flush the system and we’ve seen depleted oxygen due to blue-green algal bloom and this is the end result,” Gregory said.
“This is probably the last fish kill we’ll have because there’s nothing left to kill,” he added.
The Murray-Darling Basin is Australia’s main river system. It winds across four states and produces a third of the nation’s food.
Menindee resident Graeme McCrabb said the fish deaths highlighted how the water basin’s water management plan “is failing the whole system.”
“There’s been 13 billion [Australian] dollars [US$9.3 billion] of taxpayers’ money being spent here to end up with ... an absolute mess,” McCrabb told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
With a federal election to be called before the end of May, opposition environment spokesman Tony Burke called for a scientific explanation for the latest fish deaths.
“The last river I was at was the Darling, where you can just see the ecological disaster that’s occurring,” Burke told reporters.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in