The long-term survival of the prehistoric Australian lungfish is a step closer.
VIDEO | Check out the great short video on lungfish at the end of this page!
The long-term survival of the prehistoric Australian lungfish is a step closer after a clever South East Queensland project unearthed some super innovative techniques to protect their habitat, which are crucial to their ability to breed.
Stable populations of Australian lungfish are only found in three river systems in the world, so protecting their habitat in those rivers is critical to their survival.
The project found clever workarounds to the long-running difficulties of trying to re-establish submerged aquatic plants.
The project is focused on:
The project is being run in the mid-Brisbane area, concentrating on re-establishing submerged aquatic plants in the Brisbane River between Wivenhoe Dam and the Mount Crosby Water Treatment Plant.
The plantings will also improve river health and water quality of Brisbane’s major source of drinking water.
The innovative program focused on the tricky task of re-establishing submerged aquatic plants (macrophytes) vital for lungfish breeding that were damaged in the significant floods of 2011 and 2013.
The process of re-establishing the river’s submerged aquatic plants involves:
The program aimed at planting over 100 square meters of macrophytes in total, to grow and expand to new areas of the river over time.
The Australian lungfish is a prehistoric species that first appeared in the fossil record 380 million years ago, well before dinosaurs. The Australian lungfish is the oldest known living vertebrate, remaining unchanged from its current form for over 100 million years, and is listed as a vulnerable species under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999. Several factors are putting pressure on lungfish populations, including loss of breeding habitat, barriers that block access to or inundate breeding habitats, egg predation by invasive fish, and extreme weather conditions. While the numbers of Australian lungfish in the Brisbane River remain good, their breeding opportunities have been impacted by significant floods. The aquatic plants they lay their eggs in were ripped out of large areas of the riverbed and have not recovered. Surveys conducted by Seqwater have confirmed very few juvenile lungfish are found in the river and without intervention, the reduced breeding opportunities may start to affect the population in the Brisbane River. |
Project name: | Lungfish Habitat Rehabilitation program |
Project manager: | Mark Waud and Samille Loch-Wilkinson, Healthy Land & Water |
Catchment: | South East Queensland |
Timing: | 2020 – 2022 (Completed) |
Budget: | $60,000 |
Partnerships: | This habitat rehabilitation program forms part of a broader strategy that Seqwater has developed to ensure the survival of the Australian lungfish in South East Queensland rivers. Other key project collaborators include Griffith University and the Australian New Guinea Fish Association (ANGFA). |
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There is huge potential to build on the successful work. The project team has identified that if more funding was secured for this project, the next stage would be to establish more sites in the Brisbane River as well as the tributaries, including more nursery sites to sustain the additional plantings. This would build the resilience of the system making it more robust and likely to survive an extreme disaster-scale flood.
Funding has ended for this project. This habitat rehabilitation program formed part of a broader strategy that Seqwater has developed to ensure the survival of the Australian lungfish in South East Queensland rivers.
Other key project collaborators include Griffith University and the Australian New Guinea Fish Association (ANGFA).
Check out this great episode from Back from the Brink on the work to protect this incredible creature here: