Water extractions key driver of drying Darling River

Poor water management and excessive extraction are the primary cause of declining flow and the poor state of Australia's iconic Darling River, a new study has found. Researchers from The Australian National University (ANU) and UNSW Sydney investigated the effects of both climate change and water resource management on the Darling River over the last 40 years. Their study, published in the prestigious journal Philosophical Transactions A of the Royal Society , found the principal cause of river flow decline on the Darling River, known by First Nations people as the Baaka River, is not due to a drying climate but rather ongoing and "large-scale" water management failures. "Our analyses separated the effects of declining flows in the Darling River due to long-term meteorological trends from other factors, such as increased water extractions," study lead author ARC Laureate Fellow Professor Quentin Grafton, from ANU, said. "We found that more than half the decline in river flows on the Darling River over the past 40 years was due to factors other than higher temperatures or less rainfall. "The Darling has had high rates of water extraction for decades - driven by water allocation and provided by 15 main channel weirs and over 1,000 small weirs along its 1,000 km length, including upstream.   - "Our principal finding is that much of the river flow decline on the Darling River over the past 40 years has not been because of climate change but almost certainly a result of increased water extractions.