Guest Speaker Paul Childs, is the Senior Environmental Water Management Officer with the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage and is based in Albury. He is part of a small team that helps plan and coordinate the delivery of environmental water in the Murray and Lower Darling valleys. Paul has worked in Natural Resource Management for the past 20 years, as a trained forester with the NSW Forestry Commission, with the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service, and now with the OEH. OEH works with a range of stakeholders (including farmers, irrigation corporations, Aboriginal groups, Commonwealth and state government agencies, river operators, recreational fishers, non-government organisations, etc) to develop and implement environmental watering strategies across NSW. OEH is also responsible for developing Long Term Environmental Watering Plans for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in NSW.

The Murray Darling Basin Plan provides a rare opportunity to achieve balanced social, cultural, economic and environmental outcomes for our connected river systems.Native fish populations across the Murray Darling Basin are in decline due to a number of impacts including regulation, changed flow patterns, reduced habitat, barriers to movement and water quality issues. The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) is looking at opportunities of how environmental water management can help address some of these impacts and focus on improving flow, habitat and connectivity requirements for native fish. This presentation outlines some of the opportunities that are available to improve native fish populations and how through collaboration and partnerships positive outcomes can be achieved at a Basin scale.