The impacts of European settlement on the Australian environment and particularly waterways are widely documented. The clearance of catchment vegetation, the introduction of hard hooved stock, agriculture, reservoirs, the implementation of past ‘river improvement works’ such as desnagging and stream straightening are just some of the disturbances our waterways have suffered. As a consequence, incision and other erosion processes have liberated large amounts of sediment and heavily impacted on biological communities. One of the techniques available to manage unnatural rates of sedimentation is through mechanical extraction, often referred to as sand extraction. Is this the answer?