The Rudd Government faces global censure at an international wetlands conference in South Korea over its failure to take emergency action to save the dying Coorong wetlands, conservationists say.
The support of high-profile global ''green'' celebrities is also being sought to demand the Government move more swiftly to save the coastal ''lagoon and dune'' landscape in South Australia where Colin Thiele's award-winning children's book Storm Boy was filmed in the mid-1970s.
The region was now so environmentally degraded it was ''scarcely recognisable'' as the landscape depicted in the much-loved Australian classic, Coorong, Lakes and Murray Waterkeeper, Paul Davis said.
The Coorong was listed in 1985 under the Ramsar treaty, for the international protection of migratory birds, as a wetland of global significance and was gazetted as a national park in 1966.
''The national pride that attended the declaration of this wetland now contrasts with the apparent national disinterest at what is fast becoming an international disgrace,'' Mr Davis said.
The 130km stretch of coastal wetlands and its richly diverse birdlife has suffered from loss of river inflows to flush and freshen its lagoons and lake, increasing salinity, loss of vegetation, silting and exposure of acid sulphate soils.
''We watched a DVD of Storm Boy last week, and there is so little resemblance between the film and what the Coorong looks like now. It is a terrible tragedy, and calls into question Australia's integrity as a signatory to the Ramsar Convention,'' Mr Davis said.
In the weeks leading up to the Council of Australia Governments meeting in Sydney on Thursday, a number of reports have warned the condition of the Coorong and Lower Lakes have deteriorated significantly due to over-allocation of water from the Murray River for irrigation and the impact of drought.
Inland Rivers Network coordinator Amy Hankinson said the Rudd Government appeared ''indifferent to the crisis affecting the Coorong'' despite its status as wetland of international importance.
''Australia will have to answer to the world at the Ramsar wetlands conference in October over the deteriorating condition of the Coorong,'' she said.
''They will need to explain why they did nothing to acknowledge there is a crisis and to come up with an emergency package to deal with the situation.''
The Government has side-stepped requests by the Australian Greens and nine of Australia's most influential conservation organisations for an urgent listing of the Coorong on the Montreux Record of the Ramsar treaty.
The Greens and the conservation groups including Birds Australia, the Wilderness Society and Humane Society International also want the Coorong listed as a critically endangered ecological community under federal environment protection laws.
A Montreux listing flags that a Ramsar wetland is becoming degraded and ''priority conservation attention'' is required.
Federal Minister for Climate Change Penny Wong told the Senate during the week that the Government would only list a wetland site on the Montreux record ''when all locally generated remedial actions have been exhausted and where there is a high probability that such a listing would assist in achieving improvements in the on-ground condition of the Ramsar site''.
Ms Hankinson said listing the Coorong on the record was ''not an admission of defeat or failure on the part of the Government but a clear acknowledgment that there is a problem and the Government intends to do something about it''.