A native fish that vanished from a New South Wales river more than a century ago is swimming there once again, in what conservationists are calling a landmark moment for one of Australia's most threatened freshwater species.
Macquarie perch have been reintroduced to the Big Badja River, a clear upland stream in the state's south-east, where the species had not been recorded since 1913. The return is a key milestone of the Snowy 2.0 Threatened Fish Management Plan, a program designed to offset the impacts of the giant hydro project by rebuilding populations of imperilled native fish across the region.
Once widespread through the southern Murray-Darling system, Macquarie perch have been pushed to the brink by river regulation, habitat loss, sedimentation and competition from introduced species. Today they survive in only a handful of strongholds, and any expansion of their range is treated as a significant conservation gain rather than a routine stocking.
The Big Badja effort brought together an unusually broad coalition. The NSW Government's Narrandera Fisheries Centre and Victoria's Snobs Creek hatchery supplied captive-bred fish, while wild adults were translocated from Cataract Dam to add genetic diversity and breeding-age stock to the new population. Snowy Hydro funded the work through its threatened fish commitments, and the local Monaro Acclimatisation Society provided on-the-ground support.
That mix of captive-bred juveniles and translocated wild fish is deliberate. Hatchery fish establish numbers quickly, but moving mature wild adults into the system gives the reintroduced population a better chance of spawning successfully and adapting to its new home, rather than relying on hatchery output alone.
The Big Badja was chosen because it still offers the cool, clear, well-oxygenated water and rocky habitat that Macquarie perch need to thrive — conditions that have disappeared from much of their former range. Re-establishing the species in a river where it once flourished is also a hedge against catastrophe: spreading the fish across multiple secure sites reduces the risk that a single drought, bushfire or disease outbreak could wipe out a large share of the remaining population.
For recreational anglers, the project is a reminder that the health of native fisheries depends on long-term habitat work as much as on bag limits and closed seasons. Macquarie perch remain a protected species and are not a target for harvest, but their recovery is closely watched by the freshwater fishing community as a barometer for the broader native fish revival now under way in the upper Murray-Darling catchments.
If the reintroduced fish establish and begin breeding in the Big Badja, the river could become another self-sustaining stronghold for a species that has spent more than a hundred years absent from its waters — a slow-burn conservation win built on hatcheries, careful translocation and the cooperation of government, industry and local volunteers.
