Watch as Australian Pelicans breed at Narran Lakes for first time in 20 years

Recent flows, including environmental water, have led to waterbirds breeding at the Ramsar-protected Narran Lakes (also known as Dharriwaa) for only the second time in 10 years and this included two Australian pelican colonies - a species that last bred at the site in the 1990s.

Environmental water is water legislated to be held back for environmental purposes such as bird breeding,

UNSW Sydney Centre for Ecosystem Science, Senior Research Fellow, Dr Kate Brandis, said the breeding event demonstrated that our birds and wetlands have some resilience.

The pelicans weren't the only waterbirds that bred in the lakes and nearby Macquarie Marshes this season - there were also ibises, spoonbills, cormorants, egrets, night herons and more.

"To see Narran Lakes full again, which hasn't happened for a very long time, and for the pelicans to breed there for the first time in over 20 years is pretty amazing," Dr Brandis told the Daily Liberal.

"If you had asked me a couple of years ago, I don't know that I would have said we'd ever see them back again.

"I don't think it necessarily demonstrates we've done a good job with this - it demonstrates what we've lost. It shouldn't be more than 20 years before pelicans can breed in nature - that gap should be much smaller."

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Dr Brandis and her team worked in the area on behalf of the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder (CEWH) to monitor the NSW waterbird breeding events.

Monitoring included studying the size of the colonies, reproductive successes and failures, and water depth and quality.

"My research team and those from the NSW Department of Planning and Environment, have been monitoring Narran Lakes and Macquarie Marshes every two weeks since November last year," Dr Brandis said.

"We monitor whether the birds successfully breed to completion, which involves studying how many eggs successfully become chicks and how many of these chicks become juvenile birds that can leave the wetland and contribute to the larger population.

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"Throughout the monitoring, we also study water depth which is essential for the bird breeding to make it to completion. If water levels rise too quickly, nests become flooded, and if water levels fall too fast it reduces food availability and increases vulnerability to predators, and the likelihood of adults abandoning nests."

Real-time monitoring of the breeding events provided essential information to the CEWH and NSW Environmental Water Managers about water flow and helped them manage it to support the birds.

Landholders in the area were crucial to the event, and an agreement with a private landholder at Narran River had additional water flow to Narran Lakes when the flood water began dropping, to support the bird breeding to continue.

CEWH's Dr Simon Banks said it was "fantastic" to see the water for the environment maintaining the wetland and contributing to the successful completion of bird breeding.

"Waterbird populations have declined significantly along eastern Australia since the 1980s, making successful breeding events at Narran Lakes, Macquarie Marshes and other wetlands in the Murray-Darling Basin essential to helping replenish bird numbers," Dr Banks said.

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The research team estimates there have been around 5000 breeding pairs of Australian Pelicans at Narran Lakes along with several thousand breeding pairs of other waterbirds including straw-necked ibis, royal spoonbills, glossy ibis, egrets, cormorants and Australasian darters.

Included in the 5000 pairs of Australian pelicans were two pelicans that had been leg-banded in the Lachlan River catchment as part of the Lake Brewster Banding Project, meaning the birds had made a journey of more than 400 kilometres.

Macquarie Marshes also had large ibis and egret colonies successfully breed from September 2022 to March 2023.

Dr Brandis said the team monitored three straw-necked ibis colonies of a possible 27 at the marshes and found there were around around 85,000 nests across those three colonies alone.

*Video footage by Harro for UNSW.