Freshwater turtles could be the solution to keeping the Murray-Darling clean and to helping eradicate carp from the river system, a study has found.
Western Sydney University research has revealed that turtle scavenging can remove fish carcasses from the water five times faster than natural decomposition.
It also has found that if turtles are reintroduced, they will dramatically improve the river's water quality by eating the fish carcasses before they begin to rot.
Western Sydney University ecologist Ricky Spencer said turtles played a particularly important role in cleaning up waterways after fish-kill events.
"They love to eat and are always asking for food like fish and meat so they are really important in terms of cleaning up rivers of any dead fish," Mr Spencer said.
Mr Spencer said adding more turtles to the river system would help to regulate the river's nutrients instead of taking them out completely.
"What would normally happen is that bacteria would break the carp down and release the nutrients into the water column, which can trigger things like blue-green algae and that's potentially what causes our rivers to turn green," Mr Spencer said.
"Turtles regulate the carp, so instead they'll compete with that bacteria and nutrients and they'll store it and then release it in a more regulated fashion."
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/turtles-could-solve-the-murray-darling-s-carp-problem-resea...
They'd have to fix this problem first, wouldn't they?:
"Turtle populations in the basin have been declining because of predators such as foxes, cats and goannas preying on nests, and because of roadkill, marine disease and poor water quality due to water connectivity issues."
"A lot of things must be done to prevent that from happening to control the foxes and cats particularly, but certainly anything's worth a try."
Mr Spencer said if more turtles were introduced to the river, community involvement would be imperative to the project's success.
"Our '1 Million Turtles Program' is where communities can be actively involved in protecting turtle nests and creating turtle islands," he said.
"We're really trying to enable communities to do it because people love turtles and we want to harness that so we can actually start restoring our native turtle populations."
