Water quality at Tilba Tilba Lake

Local landholders are leading efforts to restore vegetation at Tilba Tilba Lake and Victoria Creek to improve the ecosystem health.

Assessing riparian vegetation at Victoria Creek, Tilba Tilba Lake catchment

At Victoria Creek and Tilba Tilba Lake on the NSW South Coast, many years of clearing vegetation and livestock accessing the water have caused bank erosion, sedimentation and bacterial contamination from livestock trampling the banks and faeces washing into the waterway.

As a result, the lake has received poor to fair ecological health scores compared to similar coastal lakes across New South Wales.

To improve the health of Victoria Creek and Tilba Tilba Lake, the Marine Estate Management Strategy has funded a series of rehabilitation activities since 2019, coordinated by South East Local Land Services with landowners and local Wagonga Aboriginal rangers.

These activities will have a range of social, economic and environmental benefits for the surrounding environment and landowners, with the goal of improving the system health of Victoria Creek and Tilba Tilba Lake.

Our scientists were engaged to develop a scientifically rigorous monitoring program to better understand the ecosystem health of Victoria Creek and Tilba Tilba Lake system and determine the baseline conditions for the system.

The rehabilitation project involved landowners and Wagonga Aboriginal rangers:

  • replanting riparian vegetation (the trees and shrubs lining the fringes of waterways) with appropriate native species
  • installing new fencing to prevent cattle from entering the waterways
  • adding water troughs to provide new drinking points for livestock.

Over time, we expect to see:

  • creek banks becoming stabilised by the increased riparian vegetation
  • less erosion
  • more habitat and shade along the creek
  • greater diversity of species including frogs, fish and water-bugs.

By excluding livestock near the creek and lake, we’ll also see improvements to ground cover, bank stability. instream vegetation and bacterial and nutrient levels in water.

As a result of improvements to the ecosystem, landowners will benefit from improved health and productivity of livestock due to:

  • better shelter from more trees
  • access to high-quality water which will increase water and forage intake and lead to weight gain and higher milk production
  • reduced risk of stock diseases including mastitis.

More native vegetation on their land will also increase its value, and landowners may have a greater sense of wellbeing from their contribution to nature conservation.

It may be many years until we see big improvements in Victoria Creek and Tilba Tilba Lake, but the more people that come on board to undertake improvement works on their land adjacent to the creek and lake system, the greater the results will be.