Recently, North Central CMA, and the Victorian Environmental Water Holder, excitedly reported that they had won the innovation in Water Management category at the national River Basin Management Society’s awards night for the design, construction and operation of the new fishway at Koondrook Weir on the Gunbower Creek.
As a result of the Koondrook Weir fishway they would now be able to “create a world-class native fishery in the region”.
Unfortunately, they never read their own 2019 report titled, “Carp movements on an inundated floodplain – Gunbower Forest case study” where it says (page 1), “Delivery of flows into Gunbower Forest may however lead to detrimental outcomes such as promotion of carp recruitment”.
The recruitment of carp following the current flooding can only be described as astronomical with the result that phenomenal numbers of carp have migrated into the Gunbower Creek via the Koondrook Weir fishway and the Hipwell Regulator fishlock.
Throughout the above mentioned report there are also references to “implementing carp management options such as closing regulators” (page 2) and therefore you would have thought that someone from NCCMA or the VEWH would have had the foresight, initiative and/or common sense to close the exit gates at both the Koondrook fishway and Hipwell Regulator fishlock and thus prevent the mass migration, into the Gunbower Creek, that has occurred. It is even more damning that no actions were taken until being notified of the problem by concerned locals.
The claim that a world-class native fishery is going to be created in the region should now be changed to “we have created a world class carp fishery”.
Geoff Wakeman
Cohuna
