The Rudd Government is breaching Federal environment laws by delaying the acquisition of water to save the Coorong wetlands in South Australia, a leading scientist says.
University of Adelaide ecologist Professor David Paton says Australia is "living the nightmare of the complete ecological collapse of a river system under climate change".
"We have become a textbook example to the rest of the world of what can happen when governments avoid taking action to fix a problem they've known about for more than a decade,". Prof Paton said.
A South Australian government agency report submitted two months ago to Federal, State and Territory environment ministers has called for urgent action to prevent increasing salinity and exposure of thousands of hectares of acid sulphate soils in Lake Albert and Lake Alexandria.
Known as the Lower Lakes, the 85,000ha estuarine lakes form part of the Coorong coastal wetlands near the Murray River mouth.
The report, by the SA Murray-Darling Basin Natural Resource Management Board, warns the Coorong and Lower Lakes - named by the United Nations as wetlands of international significance - will be beyond recovery unless they receive 600 gigalitres of water by October.
The Rudd Government has deferred considering the report's recommendations until the Murray-Darling Ministerial Council meets in November.
Professor Paton said further delays in addressing the Coorong crisis would place the Rudd Government in breach of the Federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act and its global obligations as a signatory to the UN Ramsar treaty to protect internationally significant wetlands.
"This is an emergency and it's typical of what will happen in the future across Australia's river systems if we don't take action now," Prof Paton said.
The report warns native fish and frogs in the Coorong and Lower Lakes are dying out, reed beds which provide food and nesting sites for birds are disappearing and bird populations are "in massive decline".
Tortoises and crabs in the Lower Lakes are being killed by saltwater tubeworms colonising their shells to such an extent that "they can no longer function as usual due to the weight of the worm colony".
Lower Murray region farmer Colin Grundy said his family had tried to rescue tortoises with shells so densely encrusted with tubeworms they could not retract their heads and legs.
"I've never seen anything like it. The worms are so thick, they weigh the tortoises down, so if they tip over they can't get up again. It makes then very vulnerable to foxes," Mr Grundy said.
The Federal Opposition has called for the rapidly-declining state of the Coorong and Lower Lakes to be declared a national environmental emergency.
"We need an emergency meeting not in August, September, October or November, but by the fourth of July," Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt said.
The Australian Greens have urged Federal Minister for Climate Change and Water Penny Wong to secure the release of water stored in the Menindee Lakes in south-west NSW and to purchase water from other major storages in northern NSW to restore flows to the Coorong.
Greens spokeswoman Rachel Siewert said unless water can be delivered to the Coorong and Lower Lakes throughout winter and spring, these ecosystems will "hit a crucial tipping point beyond which acidity problems will be out of control and the runaway collapse of these ecosystems is almost certain".
Senator Wong said the situation in the Lower Lakes and Coorong was symptomatic of problems across the Murray-Darling Basin.
"We know this is an urgent problem," Sen Wong said.
"It is not an easy problem to tackle, it is a problem that results from too many years of inaction and delay on climate change and water."
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