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Murray Darling #3 Wetlands

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ghostly gum trees, without foliage, standing in water in pink sunsetting light
Dead red gum trees and cumbungi, in a floodplain wetland now used as off-river water storage. The dead trees indicate that it used to be a seasonal wetland which filled and dried to the natural rhythm of the Murray/Darling River system, now controlled by dams and weirs for irrigation. Gum Swamp, Lachlan River, Forbes, New South Wales, Australia(Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Scattered across the Murray Darling basin are numerous wetlands, 16 of them deemed important enough to be protected by the international RAMSAR Convention.

But environmental historian Emily O’Gorman says it is a mistake to set wetlands aside as areas not available for human interaction and use.

Because humans, especially Aboriginal people, have been intertwined with these places, always.

This is the final instalment of our three part series on the Murray Darling.

Guest;

Emily O'Gorman, senior lecturer at Macquarie University

Author of ‘Wetlands in a dry land: More-than-human histories of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin’ (University of Washington Press)

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