Our water practices over the past 200 years have brought many of our waterways to their knees. Help restore our rivers, lakes and estuaries.

Over the past two centuries our land clearing, farming practices and excessive water extraction have caused the health of our river systems to degrade. Signs of this decline in the health of our waterways include the loss of biodiversity; toxic algal blooms; declining nutrients and water quality as a result of introduced species such as carp, and salinity and sedimentation (caused by our farming practices). As a result, most of the 1000+ estuaries around our coast are also in decline. The most potent example of this is the estuary at the mouth of our greatest river system, the Murray, being blocked from the ocean because we have extracted too much water from the system).

To understand and help heal these rivers, lakes and estuaries we all need to find a way to contribute.

How to do it now!

1.     Demand that adequate environmental flows are restored to all Australian rivers

A UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education report on the global trade in embedded water in agricultural products (2005) found that Australia has an annual Net loss of 57,000 billion litres of water! This means, Australia's net trade in agricultural products incurs a water loss of over twice the water that we capture annually in all our dams and catchments.

The reason we have a drought is largely because of gross mismanagement of our natural resources rather than El Nino, global warming or any other phenomena that is trotted out to explain away the situation. And these figures don’t include our non-agricultural water deficit resulting from wood, paper and aluminium exports.

2.     Join an NGO and help them lobby our politicians or write them direct yourself

• The wilderness Society

• The Australian Conservation Society

• Wild Rivers (QLD)

• Environment Victoria (Healthy Rivers Campaign)

• Nature Conservation Council of NSW (Freshwater Campaign)

• Conservation Council of South Australia

• The Murray-Darling Basin Commission

3.     Include 'river restoration' in your assessment of who to vote for in the upcoming elections

4.     Join a community river action group to replant, clean up and protect your local waterway.

The best place to start is to find local groups working on your local waterway. So Google your local river, lake, estuary or creek with 'friends of' or 're-vegetation of' etc, meet the local experts and find your way.

National organisations involved in regeneration of the land also specialise in river and estuary regeneration projects. Try

• Greening Australia (national)

• Landcare (national)

Why is this Action important?

Fresh Water is the life blood of nature, the subordination of water for human purposes comes at the health of those natural systems that support humans in other ways (clean our air, moderate our environment, provide us with food). So we need to nourish, share and learn to value this life blood. The consequences of doing otherwise can be seen in the spreading desserts across the world and the drought and famine that can soon follow.