At the Watershed

In the US the term watershed is equivalent to the expression water catchment used in Australia and elsewhere. Watershed is also a term used metaphorically or figuratively to indicate a dividing line - a watershed issue - a line of division.

The word watershed came into use around the beginning of the 19th century. Then it represented the boundary between two river systems. It also referred to the surrounding hills and ridges and indicated the side of the hill or ridge where the rain fell and the water flowed. But in the US it has a wider meaning and refers to the wider river catchment, or river valley, that 'catches' the water drawing it towards the river.

Political editor from the Australian Newspaper, Dennis Shanahan(2006), put the issue quite differently when speaking about Australia's water crisis and water shortage.

'...at the heart of this crisis of water management is a complex web of conflicting and warring political and governmental interests, where states such as South Australia suffer at the mouth of the Murray while Queensland allows huge water harvesting for cotton at the head of the Darling system, and the Federal Government funds water initiatives without any power to force action.'

Water sources have become a political and ecological watershed.

Using the term watershed in its figurative sense, let's look at the watershed issue of logging the water catch-ments. The water or hydrological cycle is very clear, especially in the drawings of the cycle from primary school science classes. The rain is shown as falling onto the side of the hill which is treed or forested. The trees and land catch the water, channelling it to the ground water and eventually to the creeks, tributaries and flowing water.

A New Zealand report by Haikai Tane (2004) states that: 'Australia and New Zealand are caught in an intractable cultural dilemma.' The report declares that the continued industrialisation of water catchments for timber as well as surrounding development has 'led local communities in watershed catchments ... to believe that the long term degradation of watershed catchments is normal and natural. The degradation of watershed catchments in Australia and New Zealand will continue unabated so long as communities impose activities and infrastructure that destroys ecostructure.'

The issue is one of division and values, economic versus ecological, aesthetic versus industrial, spiritual versus profitability and resource use. Tane write 'that key cosmic roles have reversed, for industrial society sets goals like Gods, and Nature becomes its maid and servant.' This is so reminiscent of the issues raised in Carolyn Merchant's 1980 ground-breaking work, The Death of Nature as well as Val Plumwood's Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993).

Leading Australian water researcher Professor Peter Cullen makes the issue clear: 'Catchment land use is an important driver of river health, and river health seems commonly to be impaired when agricultural activities cover more than 30 per cent of a catchment area; although distance from the river and the health of the riparian vegetation can mediate these effects. The removal of native vegetation can markedly alter the hydrologic behaviour of a catchment.'

'As trees are removed, runoff commonly increases, as does the amount of water flowing below the root zone and entering groundwater, and this may lead to consequent waterlogging and salinity, although there may be a lag of 20 to 50 years before these impacts are obvious.'

'River and wetland health is assisted if the connections between a river channel and its floodplain and wetlands are maintained, allowing recovery from stress events. Deeper pools and wetlands may be important refuges that allow organisms to survive extreme high or low flow events. This is called resilience: the capacity to recover. The riparian zone has a profound impact on stream ecosystem processes.'

Re-making wetlands and deep pools, developing programs aimed at ecological resilience, regeneration of riparian zones, removal of noxious weed species and revitalization of native plant species - it seems all these things can help on the eco-front, but on the socio-political front, Haikai Tane declares we need a deeper understanding and a regeneration and revitalization of awareness, values and actions.

'What post-industrial society urgently needs is a new paradigm for understanding watershed catchments based on the integrity and connectivity of catchment habitats and landscape ecosystems.'

References
Cullen P, 2007, The Ecological Challenge of Water Reform, ATSE Focus, 145, http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=1007
Merchant C, 1980, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, San Francisco, Haper and Row.
Plumwood V, 1993, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, New York: Routledge.
Shanahan D, 2006, A Watershed on the Water Front, The Australian, Sept 26, 2006.
Tane H, 2004, Catchment Habitats and Landscape Ecosystems, Watershed Systems Ltd,Center for Catchment Ecology, http://watershed.net.nz/fpeandwm.htm

EcoFlows and Spirit of Place

At the big international river event in 2007, a highly significant declaration was made to protect waterway flows along global river systems to ensure freshwater ecosystem health and human well-being.

The initial statement from the Riversymposium and International Environmental Flows Conference, acknowledges that 'freshwater ecosystems are the foundation of our social, cultural, and economic well-being.'

This is a massive change. The Declaration recognises the need for healthy freshwaterways to ensure the ongoing sustainability of society and culture as well as the economic bouyancy of the planet. The flourishing of the economy is inextricably linked to the ecology of rivers, lakes, floodplains, wetlands and estuaries. To me, this is a revelation but will it be enacted when governments are planning development, dams, mines, inappropriate agriculture, or wholescale logging?

While the government's ecological sustainable development (ESD) policy involves a balance beween the environment, the economy and the social, government decisions seem to prefer the economic over the ecological and the social. But not always, as the spread of marine protected areas (MPAs) in Australia has shown. Sadly action around MPA implementation is not a global change.

Of the three components that comprise ESD, the social seems to have the least action and interest directed to it. Thus a declaration that links social wellbeing with freshwater ecosystems is a real highlight from Brisbane's annual River Symposium.

Social impacts are well recognised as part of government planning and social impact assessments are often undertaken before development or policy implementation, but concern and action around potential social impacts after the event may be overlooked while social problems may be relegated to the welfare sector.

Yet one vital feature but one often neglected in ESD frameworks is the spiritual impact of decisions. Government decisions may follow the precautionary principle of when in doubt, don't. They may consider social concerns and likely social problems but they ignore the spirtual, and the impact on a community's, family's or individual's spirit.

An understanding of spiritual impacts might be incorporated into Aboriginal land rights cases or be included in projects affecting indigenous cultures and communities in developing nations and peasant or shamanic societies, but spiritual issues are not usually part of environmental or social impact assessments related to projects affecting non-indigenous cultures in the developed world.

An inclusion of the spiritual looks holistically. It embraces the spiritual as part of social health and wellbeing as well as ecological reverence. It honours the evironment and the fresh and saltwater ecosystems as 'persons' in their own right.

Psychological distress through loss of place, through upheavals in ecosytems from development, clearfelling, pollution of rivers and oceans, inappropriate agricuture, depletion of fisheries, loss of land and even natural disasters, has been demonstrated. I find it paradoxical that counselling may be offered after natural disasters but trauma around human-created loss of place and the effect on people's spirit, their resilience, their health and wellbeing, may neither be recognised nor acted upon.

The Brisbane River offers solace and peace. It's an icon for the city. At the moment its dark brown muddy colour is a reminder that the drought of a couple of weeks ago may now be a memory. The rain is flushing out the river and rushing through stormwater drains, local creeks and steep gutters and sadly causing flooding along its way. Wetlands, floodways, billabongs were once part of this vibrant river system but since European settlement these essential habitats have been over-channelled, filled in and changed - with a consequent loss of water quality in what was once a place of clear clear water.

The spirit of this city is related to environmental flows.

The River Symposium Declaration states that: 'Freshwater ecosystems are seriously impaired and continue to degrade at alarming rates. Aquatic species are declining more rapidly than terrestrial and marine species. As freshwater ecosystems degrade, human communities lose important social, cultural, and economic benefits; estuaries lose productivity; invasive plants and animals flourish; and the natural resilience of rivers, lakes, wetlands, and estuaries weakens. The severe cumulative impact is global in scope.

'Flow alteration imperils freshwater and estuarine ecosystems. ...The goal of environmental flow management is to restore and maintain the socially valued benefits of healthy, resilient freshwater ecosystems through participatory decision making informed by sound science. Ground-water and floodplain management are integral to environmental flow management.'

The Declaration concludes:
'Climate change intensifies the urgency. ... The progress made to date falls far short of the global effort needed to sustain healthy freshwater ecosystems and the economies, livelihoods, and human well-being that depend upon them.'

The Edge-iness of Rain

The rain continues to tumble. Sleeting down. Heavy. Fast. Thick. So much water has fallen in the past few weeks that the once much sought-after rain has also delivered floods, anxieties and severe loss to places that a such a short time ago were parched. The dams in SE Queensland that supply water to homes and industries are filling slowly, but even after all this rain, one of the major dams is still only 18.03 per cent full. The rivers are thirsty. They have a lot of catching up to do.

The Queensland Water Commission states: 'Understanding our water cycle is critical to ensuring that we manage our water resources.'

Knowledge of the intricacies of the water cycle needs to leap out of the primary school science lesson and into an imaginative and innovative campaign aimed at raising awareness and understanding of the beauty of the water system as the hilltop trees catch the rain and channel it through water-brimming rivers to the ocean, where through evaporation the water rises to the clouds, plumps them with watery greyness which sheds more life-bringing rain back into the system. Continuously. The movement of the water cycle connecting nature and human.

Evaporation. Transpiration. Respiration. Inspiration.

One place of inspiration where the water cycle plays centre stage is the Mt Cootha Botanical Gardens children's garden. We walked sheltered from the very light rain beneath the rainforest canopy and followed the interactive trail as it snaked its way along the rushing creek. Lizards darted out between the stones, water dripped from the overhead branches and signs painted on the pathway directed us to look harder, listen deeper, feel and wonder.

This magical trail was dotted with evocative artworks - the giant water dragon sculpture in the pond was surrounded by living water dragons, one perched on its big tail; a whimsical orange snake made from an old car muffler wound around a branch digesting its mufflery meal, and gloriously-crafted dragonflies adorned the bridge across the pond like exquisite sentinels.

Green was abundant. Flourishing. Bursting as if the plants were growing right before our eyes. And they were.

We watched as tiny native bees crafted their delicious-tasting honey in the knotty trunk of an old eucalypt and listened to the ringing of birdsong and the rhythms of cascading waters. The trees revelled in the rain. They understood intimately the significance of the water cycle of which they are a central feature. The sources of water are not only 'our water resources'. They are a shared resource between human and nature.

Whipbirds

The river trail was filled today with the glorious song of the Eastern Whipbird, the hooping of the pheasant-like Coucal and the chattering of flycatchers, wrens and other LBBs (Litte Brown Birds). The Whipbird's sonorous whistle echoes across the valley. Mostly, says the birdbook, they are heard but not seen so it was a special moment watching a pair of these smalll birds hop through the branches, chattering and singing (Frith, 1976).

The clever musicality of the Whipbird is created by both male and female singing together. The male starts off with his characteristic smooth 'Whip!', then the female completes the call with a high-pitched, drawn-out and beautiful 'choo-eeeeeee'. And here they were, the two of them, looking splendid, their head crests raised slightly, their olive feathered backs blending into the leafy canopy, and their fan-like tail swishing back and forth dancing among the branches.

Whipbirds are very active but shy. They forage in the leaf litter and logs lying on the ground searching for insects and larvae. And the birdbook reveals something else that's special about the Whipbird - they are 'an ancient group of species that are found no where else' (Frith, 1976: 396).

There's been a lot of rain lately. It's flooding in many locations across southern Queensland causing havoc. Here the river is running high, fast and brown. Lots of people are out and about jogging, rowing, walking their dogs, and as their dogs splash in the shallows between the Mangroves, we talk about the height of the river, the very high tidal flows and the return of the wet.

Looking up at what were sad and seemingly dead trees a few weeks ago, clumps of new shoots have begun sprouting from the branches, while the birds heralding the rain, the new growth and the revitalised life along the riverbank.

Reference
Frith HJ, 1976, Reader's Digest Complete Book of Australian Birds, Surry Hills, Reader's Digest Services Pty Ltd.

Black, White and Bountiful

I heard a kind of bark from up in the eucalypt trees. There it is again. I look up bewildered; can't see anything by leaves. Then suddenly, from the canopy, an Ibis lifts off and flies down the river. An Ibis is no small bird but this bird was invisible in the tree as if its black and white feathers merged into the leafy cover.

So I began to think about all the black and white birds along the riverbank - Magpies, Mudlarks, Willie Wagtails, Currawongs, Butcher Birds - and wondered how being black and white creates the illusion of camouflage and blurs the creature into the background. Fiona Sunquist (1996) had the same thought. In an article entitled 'The colorful world of black white - black and white animals', she points out that many animal and bird species throughout the world wear black and white costumes. First, it's to grab attention and tell potential predators that danger awaits them if they tackle the black and whites. Second, it's to hide; the colours act as a disguise so the creature can't be seen against the undergrowth or leafy canopy. Sunquist says:

'Such concealment is all a matter of context. Jays and magpies have black-and-white feathers that are highly conspicuous in the open. But when a bird dives for cover, its outline vanishes, and the white bars and patches look more like splashes of sunlight among the leaves.' My experience exactly.

Then there's the enticing black and white striped Carpet Snake but their vanishing perhaps has more to do with them eating the poisonous cane toads rather than being in hiding, waiting to pounce. And animals from Pandas to Lemurs, Shunks to Zebras, Orcas to Colubus Monkeys, many of them serioiusly endangered in their wild, use their colour scheme to deceive.

Other birds use their colour to attract. The other birds along the river today displayed a feast of colour. Rainbow Lorikeets. Galahs pink and grey, Red Wrens. White Cockatoos, Brush Turkeys showing off their red and yellow. Male birds dress in feathered finery to attract a mate. Bower birds build wee nests and decorate them. Spendid plumage and sexuality go hand in hand.

Black and white birds, and the glossy black Raven, have something in common. Perhaps it is that they are more fearsome and their colour scheme is a marker to beware. Today when the whole gang arrived for their breakfast, Butcher Birds + brown baby, Currawongs, Magpies + babies, Raven + baby, I thought how wonderful it is to have these beautiful beautiful creatures visiting and how sad, that even walking back from the river, aborists were cutting down more and more trees.

Reference
Sunquist F, 1996, 'The Colorful World of Black White - Black and White Animals,' International Wildlife, May-June.

Water Rights

David Groenfeldt is the Executive Director of the Santa Fe Watershed Association in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Santa Fe River he cares for has recently been declared the most endangered river in the US.

When I first spoke to David Groenfelt he told me something amazing. It was a different way of seeing a river system and the relationship between humans and the water.

Humans believe they have rights to river water. For drinking, sewerage, irrigation, and recreation. They think this becuase they pay for access to water in the form of water rights. They have a right to the flowing stream's water or the meandering river's water. But what happens when their use rights drain the river and the surrounding ecosystem of its lifeblood? The outcome, a drying or dried up river and a paradox where the river has no rights, even to its own water.

Taking this outcome to its extreme - how much would a river pay for access rights to its own water? As can be seen in many areas across the globe, the river pays with its life.

Over the weekend the media reported two damaging river stories. The first in The Australian newspaper told the terrible story of how the parts of Murray River have turned to acid. The effect - an acid river that brings death to animals, birds, fish, frogs and insects that drink from and live in its hazardous waters. River Red Gums and other riverbank vegetation is also slowly dying. There is no relief in sight.

The acidic water is caused by the drought and over-irrigation taking the precious flow. The article says acid waters occur in areas that used to flood regularly but now these areas have become dry. The low river levels have allowed the iron pyrite in the soil (a by-product of decaying organic matter) to come into contact witih oxygen. This process acts like a chemical reaction forming sulphuric acid. The solution? Rain and stronger river flows.

The second media story focused on the Darling River. The ABC Landline journalist stood in the heart of the river, in sand and stones, sadly not flowing water, and spoke about its plight. Interviewees on the program not only mentioned the huge economic losses to the farming and tourism sectors, they also talked about the disappearance of water birds to the area. And their loss of place.

A dried up river, once the life-bringing waterway of inland Queensland and NSW, is suffering from an over-abundance of irrigation licences for inappropriate agriculture. One of the inteviewees put it this way:

'In the years before 2006 we had what I call the cotton drought. The irrigators upstream took so much water out of the river that we just didn't get the flows through that we should have got, and we didn't get the small floods through that are essential for the flood plains.' (Barney Stevens, Darling River Action Group, 2007).

Other farmer interviewees simply said the river is dying. A huge huge cost when humans do not recognise this simple need: that rivers need rights to their own water.

Reference
Wallace R, 2008, 'River of death where water turns into acid,' The Australian, Jan 12, 2008
Willacy M, 2007, 'Community rallies to save the Darling River,' ABCTV Landline, Jan 13, 2008, originally aired on June 17, 2007.

Life for Rivers

Rivers for Life is a very insightful book covering the need for global care of water and river systems for both people and nature. Written by Sandra Postel and Brian Richter (2003) from the Global Water Policy Project, Rivers of Life's first chapter is titled: Where Have All the Rivers Gone? It documents the impact wrought by human development through changing infrastructure (such as dams, hydro-projects, dredging etc.) on rivers, wetlands and other freshwater ecosystems, so much so that the health of the river and the plant and animal species that dwell in and along the river are threatened. The authors estimate that worldwide that 'a significant proportion of fresh water species ...including 20 percent of freshwater fish species ... are at risk of extinction or are already extinct.' (2003:3)

Healthy river systems are fast disappearing. But at the same time there is a host of activists, river and wetlands restorers who are working to re-create river health and wellbeing. Postel and Richter advise rivers should be valued for their own sake not only for the services they provide the human community. They comment: 'Rivers are more than conduits for water. They are complex systems that do complicated work.' (4)

What's needed for the restoration of river systems is all the scientific research that's being done as well as great encouragement for people to care for local waterways. One suggestion is to tell river stories from the present and the past, e.g. stories from indigenous communities and from the early days of white settlement when cotton growing, sugar cane farms and cattle stations spread out along the river. People may become more aware, more engaged and perhaps more motivated to take action to protect the river environs.

Talking to people I meet on the trail teaches me so much about the river and its history. We discuss the birds we've seen, the experiences of flood times, how tough it was for the early settlers in clearing the luscious rainforest for farmland and more generally, about the threat of encroaching development. And we work together to care for the precious bushland. Each day I pull up a number of noxious weeds but with the recent fantastic rain, the weeds are growing faster and taller than my ability to rip them up them; it seems impossible to combat their spread.

Postel and Richter are optimistic that people will learn to appreciate the natural environment including rivers and so might replicate the 'complicated work' that rivers do by lobbying for river education and river health. To this end the authors make a serious plea:

'Unless human communities begin to adapt to natural cycles and coexist with aquatic communities, those natural communities will disappear and the ecological work they perform will be lost.' (202).

They call for an ethic of stewardship which respects 'the beauty and mystery' of the natural world while at the same time demanding from governments a more aware, community-embedded active rivercare program.

One of the case sudies from Rivers of Life is the Brisbane River and its deteriorating health. Postel and Richter point to the extent of land clearing where now only 14 percent of the whole river catchment area where most people live 'remains uncleared' (133). They document a litany of river impacts that have severely affected the river flow, from construction of dams to changes in waterway vegetation which interferes with 'shading and temperature controls' raising the likelihood of 'algal blooms and lowering dissolved oxygen levels.' (135, citing Arthington et al, 2000).

The list of concerns continues with the loss of biodiversity and subsequent loss of habitat for bird, animal and fish species, including the platypus.

To combat these problems (or are they horrors?), a number of counter strategies are suggested. It requires concerted and combined action among all stakeholders and residents but of course, such suggestions to restore healthy river systems may (or invariably do) bring conflict, as ecological demands can disturb policy and development desires and outcomes. Postel and Richter (2003:137) write:

'This conflict between managing the Brisbane River for human purposes versus meeting the river's own needs for water is one that arises on virtually every river. ... Complete restoration of the Brisbane's natural flow regime would likely cause too much disruption to landowners and water users to be publicly acceptable.'

In the end such conflict is played out between humans and nature where nature's voice is rarely heard. At the moment the Butcher Bird is sitting on the verandah singing the most glorious chorus and sounding, on occasion, like the Magpie, the Kookaburra and of course, itself. I love that. The very melodic refrain of the Butcher Bird reminds me how important it is to value local river systems and trees and get involved in that complicated work of the ecosystem of which, we humans too, are part.

References
Arthington AH et al, 2000, Environmental Flow Requirements of the Brisbane River Downstream from Wivenhoe Dam, Brisbane, Queensland: South East Queensland Water Corporation, and Centre for Catchment and In-Stream Research of Griffith University.
Postel S and B Richter, 2003, Rivers For Life: Managing Water for People and Nature, Washington, DC: Island Press.