The precious rivers and waterways that make our Top End so unique and support our fishing lifestyle are under threat from proposals for industrial-scale dams, water extraction, and pollution from mines.

The Federal Government has identified the Roper River as the next great NT River to be potentially sucked dry, and more than one million hectares of the catchment bulldozed for irrigated crops like cotton.

This follows the Federal proposal for two major dams on the Adelaide River and the Finniss River. Damming the Territory’s three major rivers would be devastating for fishing, biodiversity, and the receiving marine environments. 

At a time when we can see the disastrous impacts of irrigated cotton on the Murray-Darling River, it would be terrible to repeat them on the Territory’s great rivers. 

Further, the concerning Roper Valley bauxite mine proposal continues to threaten some of the Territory’s most precious places - the Roper River and the Limmen Bight Marine Park. Tonnes and tonnes of iron ore on massive trucks, barges and ships will soon be on the move through these well-loved places. This threatens to destroy water quality, poses oil spill and pollution risk, and adds industrial pressures to these precious places. Two billion litres of water is proposed to be taken from the Roper River annually AND a 400m long dam built on the Hodgson River catchment, which also flows into the Roper.  

Our mighty rivers and fishing lifestyle are too precious to risk and must continue to flow.