Review of ecological monitoring and evaluation programs in the Murray-Darling Basin

The Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder (CEWH) was established to manage the Commonwealth environmental water holdings and to administer the Environmental Water Holdings Special Account on behalf of the Commonwealth. As a requirement of the Act, the CEWH must report annually on the ‘achievements against the objectives of the environmental watering plan’. To achieve this the CEWH requires a monitoring and evaluation program to enable effective reporting in accordance with this statutory requirement.

DEWHA commissioned Alluvium to identify, review and develop summary reports on existing monitoring and evaluation programs in the Murray Darling Basin. This project then assessed a selection of these existing monitoring and evaluation programs against best practice monitoring and evaluation, and made comment on the suitability and usefulness for the CEWH’s needs.

The study found that the programs designed to monitor the ecological response to the provision of environmental water were typically developed to improve the scientific understanding of the flow-ecology links. Few programs were specifically designed to evaluate and regularly report on the success or otherwise of achieving the objectives of environmental water delivery. Nonetheless, most monitoring and evaluation programs had some component of evaluation and reporting that could be adapted and adopted for this purpose.