Rainfall reveals the benefits of mallee restoration
After good rain, the mallee comes alive. The scent of eucalyptus fills the air, native vegetation responds and birds move through the bush in search of food and shelter.
This is the kind of healthy, thriving natural environment the Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board and its partners have been working towards restoring in the mallee landscape, north of the Riverland. After years of restoration works, record-breaking rainfall has provided the first real opportunity to see how the area is responding.
Three years after Mooraninna dam was removed and returned to its natural form in Danggali Wilderness Protection Area, the recent rain has revealed how the restoration is beginning to change the way water moves through the area. Instead of collecting in deep, artificial dam, water is now spreading more naturally across the landscape where it can soak into the soil and support native vegetation.
Artificial dams were once an important part of pastoral production, providing reliable water for livestock in a dry landscape. While many are no longer needed for that purpose, they can continue to influence how water and wildlife behave.
While this amount of rain would still have caused the dam to overflow, removing the artificial water point is helping restore more natural seasonal cycles. This matters because artificial dams can provide a permanent water source for feral goats and overabundant kangaroos, allowing grazing pressure to remain high year-round. Over time, this can reduce vegetation cover and limit habitat available for threatened mallee birds.
By removing the dam and restoring natural landforms, the area is beginning to recover from these long-term impacts, Reduced reliance on permanent water sources allows grazing pressure to ease over time and creates better conditions for native vegetation and threatened mallee species to recover.
The recent rainfall event offers a glimpse of what that future could look like. Every rainfall event now has the potential to help this area recover, creating better conditions for native plants and the threatened birds that rely on them.
As vegetation cover increases in response, it will slow the flow of water across the surface during future rainfall events. More water will soak into the ground instead of evaporating, and it will spread across a progressively larger area each time. As a result, the area of recovering habitat will continue to expand.
Ecologists are looking forward to revisiting the site in spring, once the standing water has gone to see how the native vegetation has responded and to better understand the benefits of restoring natural water movement.
This project is funded by the Australian Government Natural Heritage Trust and delivered by the Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board, a member of the Commonwealth Regional Delivery Partners panel
