Voice of Real Australia is a regular newsletter from ACM, which has more than 100 mastheads across Australia. Today's is written by ACM national agriculture writer Chris McLennan.
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No matter what eventually happens to the enormous shale gas reservoirs deep below the ground's surface in the Northern Territory outback, one thing is already clear.
What was once one of the most unexplored regions in Australia has been offering up its secrets.
Teams of scientists have been criss-crossing the area of the Beetaloo in recent years learning there is more to this remote region than red dust, scrub and an occasional cow.
Today, for example, we know the water which flows deep down is important to the NT's fabled rivers, and especially their prized stocks of wild barramundi and other fish.
Many had thought the bountiful wet season rains were enough on their own to keep this Territory treasure intact.
In the recent past, some scientists adopted a seemingly un-scientific approach to discover whether there was aquatic life deep beneath the Beetaloo's surface.
An almost comical approach using fishing lines dropped into deep bore holes produced staggering results.
Blind shrimp called Stygofauna have been happily occupying the permanent darkness for goodness knows how long?
The Beetaloo Basin is Australia's supposed El Dorado, where enough gas lies trapped in the shale rocks several kilometres deep to supply the country for hundreds of years.
Energy companies have been "proving" the find for several years with deep drilling and testing of "fracking", where the drill goes sideways to extract the gas.
The debate continues on whether Australia should want to develop another fossil fuel in the push to net zero emissions while other experts say it is necessary as a "transition" fuel to renewables.
I have apologised to readers before for my focus on the Beetaloo, but as one of the very few reporters who have ever been there, I feel a sense of responsibility to do so.
Because of the importance of the Beetaloo to not just the NT economy but also to keep the lights on across Australia, a host of scientific studies have been commissioned.
To the naked eye, it appears fairly barren country but is it really?
All sorts of wild and wonderful things have been done.
Teams travelled thousands of kilometres with "sniffers" to produce a baseline for greenhouse gases in the region.
Not surprisingly, they didn't find much other than a whiff or two from the ever-present termite mounds.
Then in 2019 scientists using high-tech gear (fishing rods) checked 26 groundwater bores and two springs across the Beetaloo.
Experts from the CSIRO and Darwin's Charles Darwin University found a tiny blind shrimp was living down there, measuring up to 20mm.
There were whole families of tiny aquatic animals known as stygofauna, mostly between 0.3 and 10 millimetres in length.
Some are new to science.
It wasn't just the little animal they worry about if fracking of wells was allowed to happen here, but the belief it could prove the aquifers in this remote beef grazing country are connected.
There are fears the fracking process used to extract the gas could pollute vital groundwater reservoirs.
Now in a study published by CDU in the past month, yet more scientists have revealed NT rivers fed through reliable groundwater flows have greater fish biodiversity than inland seasonal rivers where flows rely on rain-driven surface waters.
It was the first major survey of freshwater fish fauna ever attempted in the Beetaloo Sub-basin and upper Roper River region.
Ecologist Professor Jenny Davis said the biodiversity research was important because of the emerging shale gas industry's potential impact on river flows and water quality.
Also, despite being in monsoonal tropic and savanna environments, the river systems of the region are vastly different from each other.
"The Territory experiences a range of weather conditions with high rainfall and temperatures in the tropical coastal areas and a typically dry interior, so this all plays a role in aquatic ecology," Professor Davis said.
"There is little known about the biodiversity of this region's water resources, so this research helps to address this major knowledge gap."
As part of this project, the team collected an array of fish samples using both netting and electrofishing techniques as well as eDNA analysis of water and benthic sediment samples.
The study recorded 29 species of fish in 17 families with species richness highest at groundwater-fed sites on northward draining rivers.
Prof. Davis said the most commonly detected species were the rainbowfish and the spangled perch.
"We predicted that the richest fish fauna would be present in the northernmost waterbodies receiving reliable groundwater inflows," Prof. Davis said.
Groundwater inflows into rivers such as the Roper provide the refugial habitats, and other aquatic species, needed to ensure that fish can persist during extended seasonal dry periods and droughts.
Like most scientific studies, one of the findings was that more research was needed.
"Industry developments will require the diversion or extraction of large amounts of water which may increase the risk of contamination so there is an urgent need to collect information about these aquatic systems before major developments go ahead," Prof. Davis said.
A fragility to life out here no-one ever suspected.
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