The project, which has taken decades to progress to this stage, will erect fish screens over irrigation pipelines that exist along the Murray Darling waterway and is currently constructing fish screens for irrigators in the Trangie and Nevertire areas to benefit from.

Senior Fisheries Manager Sam Davis says the project could potentially save millions of fish from being extracted and in many cases destroyed from the region's water.

READ ALSO:

"Fish screens prevent fish from being entrained into our pump irrigation and our water channels," Ms Davis said.

"Those fish who are extracted are completely lost to the local ecosystem, they will never get to return, we lose all their genetic input and we can't get it back."

"Our scientists have worked at quantifying how many fish are lost, and at our best estimate, millions of fish are lost in these water systems every year."

Craig Boys, a senior research scientist with the Department of Fisheries says the screens will more than make up for their cost once the benefits to farmers, irrigators, tourism and the ecosystem are accounted for.

"The great thing about this project is that it's a win-win, it's great for our fish, but this is also better for the farmers," Dr Boys said.

"These screens will keep the debris and fish out of the intakes they use and will prevent the blockage of siphons and sprinklers."

"It's also huge for industry, the screens we're installing today took 67 people contributing across 27 different business and half of those are in regional towns like Dubbo, so it's a huge potential for our regional towns across NSW."

Dr Boys said the cost of each individual fish screen will vary depending on the size of the irrigation pipe and other factors, but all have been designed in order to best protect Australia's native fish species.

Large variants on the design, like the one currently being installed at the Gin Gin weir, will lessen the velocity of suction pipes in order to allow fish to avoid being sucked in, while ensuring the extraction of water isn't impacted.

Mesh coverings and self-cleaning, rotating bristles will also help to ensure that no debris or fish are extracted and cause headaches for irrigators, or damage to the native species.

"This is a hugely significant project, this is the biggest to go in on an irrigation pump screen in NSW, and we hope it'll be the first of many," Dr Boys said.

"Once we start putting this technology in and demonstrating what best practice irrigation screening is about, we'll get a greater and greater uptake from people."

"It's not just this project, we're seeing a number of screens being installed all around the Dubbo area."