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The Coorong on slow pathway out of drought

Kim Rumbelow, from the Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources has been part of a restoration program for the Coorong and Lower Lakes system that has involved over a million plants. - ABC

More than a million plants have been part of a regeneration program to return the Murray-Darling's Coorong and Lower Lakes system to health.

Since 2010, the system has been back in flow, but the long drought before that had a profound effect on the environment.

At the barrages at Meningie, Kim Rumbelow, from South Australia's Department of Environment, Water and Natural Resources, says revegetation has made the fragile ecosystem stronger.

"Once the water came back, the program expanded to being about trying to improve the resilience of the system for the future," he said.

"And that was about restoring ecosystems that buffered the Coorong and Lower Lakes site and those systems that grew along the edge of the lake when the water returned.

"Some of those systems have returned naturally with the return of the water. But some of those systems haven't, so we have been focussing on identifying areas that need input within that lake edge.

"We're looking at about a million plants."


- ABC

© ABC 2013

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