Water campaigner Melissa Gray calls on NSW election candidates to focus on biodiversity

The Dubbo-based water campaigner and community organiser with the Nature Conservation of NSW, is asking for all NSW election candidates to commit to looking after our natural environment.

Ms Gray said the collapse of biodiversity was a major issue in the area and this was shown by fish kills that were "per kilometre, worse than the fish kills in Menindee" during the drought.

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"The conditions of the habitat of the river and any remaining woodland we have are critically important. We have to stop destruction of habitat," Ms Gray told the Daily Liberal.

She said, since the last election, the Dubbo catchment had seen "the biggest inflows ever recorded ... and the most extreme dries ever recorded by a long way".

"We've had very extreme impacts on changes in our river flows, and we've seen no changes whatsoever to water management in NSW," Ms Gray said.

She said places like the Ramsar-listed Macquarie Marshes are "an incredible concentration and hot bed of biodiversity", supporting an "incredible range of life".

"I've just been out there for three days to witness the end of the biggest colonial bird breeding event in 50 years and I've got goosebumps thinking about the different species of birds we saw," she said.

"There were literally hundreds of thousands of ibis, glossy ibis, spoonbills, pelicans, black swans, all sorts of waders, flocks and flocks of them, and they were only there because there was enough water because of the floods that support all the grubs and bugs for the birds to eat."

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Ms Gray said taxpayers had been responsible for managing their land and water parcels to keep just enough vegetation alive during the drought.

She said there was no accounting for these extreme weather events in NSW water management.

"They are putting our communities and everyone who lives and works in them at huge risk of running out of water, not to mention absolute destruction of the environment," she said.

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Ms Gray wants to see election candidates commit to the full implementation of the Murray Darling Basin Plan by the current deadlines.

"Without functioning rivers, this country is uninhabitable," she said.

She also wants to see candidates commit to removing funding for the re-regulating dam project at GinGin, which would see water captured between Narromine and Warren.

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She said when the river dried out upstream of Warren and it needed to be cut off, community members were rescuing fish, turtles and muscles out of the drying riverbed.

The thought of having to rescue platypus from a drying river at Wellington was "unconscionable".

"There is absolutely nothing been done since the last drought by any politician to make sure that won't happen," Ms Gray said.