Overview

This project is identifying man-made barriers that are impacting connectivity between freshwater and estuarine fish habitats in the Barron, Daintree and Mossman catchments. At least one high priority barrier will be mitigated.

Background

The focus catchments are a diversity hotspot for diadromous freshwater fish species – adults spawn in estuaries and the juvenile fish migrate upstream to wetlands where they mature into adults. Barriers like weirs, drains and culverts that stop fish moving between these habitats, are a threat to the health of recreationally and ecologically important fish stocks.

Solutions

• Developing a GIS-based inventory of all potential fish barriers
• Ground-truthing and site-assessing the inventory’s top 100 priority barriers
• Habitat augmentation of at least one barrier
• Fish barrier assessment training to build local capacity to undertake citizen science monitoring
• Ongoing monitoring regime established