The Darling-Baaka has claimed another huge run of native fish, and the die-off has dragged the Minns government's pledge to repair the river back into the spotlight. Anglers, graziers and scientists say the conditions for the next kill may already be building for this coming summer.
About 100,000 native bony bream were left dead along the Menindee Lakes earlier this year — one more entry in a sequence of die-offs that far-west New South Wales communities know all too well. A fierce heatwave and then a sharp temperature drop tipped the fish over the edge, the bony bream being especially sensitive to that swing. Yet locals insist the tally reflects a deeper failure of the system itself.
"To see a hundred thousand native fish dead on the banks of Menindee Lakes is heartbreaking, but it is not surprising," said Mel Gray, Inland Water Campaigner for the Nature Conservation Council of NSW.
Tensions sharpened this month when Canberra rejected a NSW bid for $360 million to bankroll water recovery and connectivity work across the northern basin. The state's Connectivity Expert Panel delivered its final report back in July 2024, mapping out how to keep water moving through the tributaries that feed the Barwon-Darling and eventually reach Menindee. Two years later, most of that advice is still sitting on the shelf.
To the graziers reading the river day to day, the hold-up bites. Stuart Le Lievre, who runs stock between Tilpa and Louth, did not mince words: "If we do not get that northern basin connectivity program in its entirety, the Barwon-Darling is terminal." He cautioned that another fish kill could land as early as summer and that the river towns are every bit as vulnerable. "Bourke will run out of water. Wilcannia, Tilpa, Louth will run out of water," he said. "Our communities, our biodiversity — don't we deserve fresh water?"
Water Minister Rose Jackson said NSW had tabled "potential rule-based changes to water sharing plans" that she argued would bring "improved connectivity and significant long-term benefits for the Murray-Darling Basin," adding the state stayed open to negotiation while it worked through its options. Critics who believe NSW has relied too much on federal money were unmoved.
"It beggars belief that the Minns government was expecting the Commonwealth to foot the entire bill," said Greens water spokesperson Cate Faehrmann.
South Australia's River Murray Commissioner, Emma Carmody, pushed for enforceable obligations rather than promises, saying connectivity "isn't optional" and calling for "mandatory, enforceable rules that protect flows all the way downstream and into Menindee Lakes."
The underlying science draws little argument. Richard Kingsford, a UNSW Sydney professor who has spent decades on the basin, keeps returning to a single point: "The fundamental reason the fish of the Darling keep dying is because there is not enough water allowed to flow." As floods drain away, fish crowd into the main channel, dissolved oxygen collapses, and with weir gates closed and too much water drawn upstream for irrigation, there is nowhere for them to escape.
The scale of the problem shows in the record. The latest State of the Environment report found NSW fish kills have tripled in five years, with more than 190 fish death events logged since 2021. Premier Chris Minns went to Menindee after the devastating March 2023 kill and promised locals his government would fix the river. Whether the funding and the rules arrive before temperatures spike again is the question now hanging over the Baaka.
