The carp crisis choking the Murray
If millions of carp were churning through Sydney Harbour tomorrow morning, it would be a national emergency by lunchtime. Front pages, federal taskforce announced before sunset, the lot.
It is happening right now in the Murray, and barely anyone outside the river towns has heard a word about it.
Carp are the single biggest driver of ecological collapse across the Murray-Darling. Populations grow by roughly 38 per cent a year, numbers double every two and a bit years, and as the biomass climbs so does the damage to native fish, water quality and the irrigation infrastructure our farms depend on. Independent analysis puts a science-led carp herpes virus release, cleanup included, at $800 million to $2 billion as a one-off intervention that would actually drop numbers. The current "just add water" approach is costing us around $500 million of our taxpayer dollars every single year, and is projected to burn $6 to $7 billion across the next decade maintaining failure.
We can find $13 billion for Snowy Hydro 2.0 with a $10 billion blowout still on the table, but we cannot find the money to deal with the fish choking the engine room of Australia's food supply.
If this were a Sydney problem it would be solved. Because it is a Murray problem, the heartland is told to keep waiting.
Back the Federal Royal Commission into water.
