Calling all river photographers – please share your pictures!

We’ve researched important information about Victoria’s rivers: catchment features, values and condition, major water users, key threats, and most importantly conservation priorities and ways to achieve them.

Now we’re creating an innovative web-based atlas that presents the information in an accessible, engaging way, to help you find out all about your glorious rivers and what’s significant about them.

We all know a good picture is worth a thousand words and we need photos to help illustrate the atlas. Your beautiful pics of special spots, people enjoying rivers, rivers looking healthy or sick, water infrastructure eg dams and irrigation equipment and wildlife would all help make Lifeblood sing!

So if you’ve been out and about with the camera, or could take a few snaps for us, we would be really grateful. Please send photos to Juliet at juliet.lefeuvre@environmentvictoria.org.au . Or give me a ring on 9341 8106 if you’ve got some ideas. We will of course acknowledge any photos used.

We are particularly short on pictures in the following river basins:

Lake Corangamite and other Western District Lakes (Gnarput, Bookar, Beeac etc), Hopkins River, Otway Rivers (Aire, Gellibrand, Cumberland, Anglesea, Curdies and others), Portland Coast (Moyne, Surry, Eumerella and others, Lake Condah), Millicent Coast (Mosquito Creek, wetlands around Edenhope)

Avoca River, Kiewa River, Wimmera River looking healthy

Snowy River in Victoria, East Gippsland Rivers – (Bemm, Cann, Genoa, Thurra, Wingan and others), Gippsland Lakes, South Gippsland Rivers (Tarra, Tarwin, Agnes, Bass, Powlett and others)

Werribee River (anyone been to Werribee Gorge or Lerderderg state park recently?)

One of the key threats identified through the Our Rivers Our Lifeblood project is unrestricted stock access to rivers.

Cows love the water and given the chance will spend time wallowing in rivers and wetlands. They quite literally muddy the water, cause erosion, trample and eat riverside vegetation and cause a health hazard by urinating and defecating in the rivers. They have been identified in the State of the Environment report and by every CMA in Victoria as a key manageable threat to river health!

So if you have any pics of cows in rivers, particularly with their tails in the air, engaged in unhygienic activity, please share them with us by sending photos to Juliet at Juliet.lefeuvre@environmentvictoria.org.au . There’s a prize for the best one, so get in quick!