Wetland Wonders

The Wetland Wonders project takes a cooperative approach to the management of key threats to maintain the Coongie Ramsar values both now and into the future, namely, feral animal impacts and priority weed incursions, particularly following flooding events.

The target species surveys for this project include the Kowari (Dasyuroides byrnie) and multiple species of nationally threatened native fish and local and migratory waterbirds.

It also aims to fill knowledge gaps in past and existing monitoring of these values. On-ground management actions will be informed by a Strategic Adaptive Management process and will be implemented in collaboration with relevant land managers.

The monitoring of threatening processes and their impacts on Ramsar biodiversity values will involve Traditional Owners and community volunteers.

This project is supported by the Australian Government's Natural Heritage Trust.

Aerial Survey of Waterbirds on Coongie Lakes wetlands

To capitalise on flooding events in the Coongie Lakes wetlands, aerial waterbird surveys were undertaken in the area in 2024 and 2025 to provide up-to-date information on waterbird breeding, distribution and abundance.

Conducted by the University of NSW Centre for Ecosystem Science (CES), the surveys covered the Malkumba-Coongie Lakes National Park and ther portions of this extensive wetland system across the Cooper Creek catchment. These included the Coongie Lakes Ramsar site and Coongie Lakes Important Bird Area site.

The survey covered up to 49 important riverine and floodplain wetlands and waterbodies across the Coongie Lakes Ramsar system, surveying nationally and internationally significant wetland sites. Specifically, the surveys aimed to quantify waterbird species, abundance, breeding and wetland inundation extent in the Coongie Lakes wetland system and Ramsar sites.

It provided data on the current ecosystem health of wetlands and rivers, useful for the State of the Basin Report for the Lake Eyre Basin, as well as Ramsar reporting. These data can be used to assess long-term changes to wetlands and rivers. It also provided data on the relative importance of these wetlands to waterbird populations in Australia. Changes in waterbird numbers provide a tangible way of indicating and measuring changes in the ecological health of aquatic ecosystems (rivers and wetlands) of international significance.

The project complemented the long running Eastern Australian Waterbird Survey program which has been running annually since 1983 by including areas not covered by the program,

Read the report here >> Aerial Surveys of Waterbirds on Coongie 2024 2025 Final 27 Mar26

This survey was managed by the Centre for Ecosystem Science, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UNSW Sydney; funding was provided from South Australian Department for Environment and Water (2024) through the Lake Eye Basin Inter-Governmental Agreement to inform the State of the Basin Report and the South Australian Arid Lands Landscape Board (2025).