Native Fish Recovery Strategy

Basin governments, community, First Nations, recreational fishers and scientists have developed a Native Fish Recovery Strategy. The Strategy provides a high-level framework to guide future investment. It emphasises community engagement and ownership, focusing on recovering rivers of Basin-scale significance in a way that complements existing initiatives and can be found here: Native Fish Recovery Strategy | Murray–Darling Basin Authority (mdba.gov.au).

The Native Fish Recovery Strategy recognises that native fish move, breed and complete their life cycles over Basin-scales. This means that having healthy native fish populations in any given river is largely dependent on the health of native fish populations in connected catchments. The Strategy calls for investment in actions that complement state activities and maximise outcomes at local, regional and Basin-scales through coordinated efforts.

The Strategy has a 30-year horizon to 2050, with 10-year implementation stages that aim to achieve four broad outcomes:

• Outcome One: Recovery and persistence of native fish
• Outcome Two: Threats to native fish are identified and mitigated
• Outcome Three: Communities are actively involved in native fish recovery
• Outcome Four: Recovery actions are informed by best available knowledge.

Developing partnerships is a core element of the Strategy, so that First Nations people, recreational fishers, conservation groups, industry and the broader community can lead on-ground actions to recover native fish populations and invest in local economies. This will increase our joint knowledge-base, help to find novel solutions, improve capacity and promote community participation.

During the development of the Strategy we published monthly updates to allow the community to follow along in our progress towards finalising the Strategy and incorporating feedback. As we move into implementation, we will continue publishing these updates in our news feed - and can also be contacted at NFRS@mdba.gov.au if you have any suggestions or queries.