The Ord Irrigation Area Important Bird Area is an area of land used for irrigated agriculture along the Ord River in the vicinity of the town of Kununurra in the

Kimberley region The Kimberley is the northernmost of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is bordered on the west by the Indian Ocean, on the north by the Timor Sea, on the south by the Great Sandy Desert, Great Sandy and Tanami Desert, Tanami deserts ...

of north-western

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. It has been identified by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

as a 220 km²

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

(IBA) for its significance for birds, especially estrildid finches.

Description

The IBA comprises the entire irrigated area of the

Ord River Irrigation Scheme The Ord River is a river in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The river's catchment covers . The lower Ord River and the conjunction with Cambridge Gulf create the most northern estuarine environment in Western Australia. The Ord ...

around and downstream of Kununurra, with the adjacent

Lake Kununurra Lake Kununurra is a freshwater man-made reservoir located in the Ord River valley. The lake was formed in 1963 by the construction of the Ord Diversion Dam in Kununurra, northern Western Australia, which was built to supply water to the Ord Ri ...

extending upstream from the town. The establishment of irrigated farmland has formed perennially moist areas of

cumbungi ''Typha'' is a genus of about 30 species of monocotyledonous flowering plants in the family Typhaceae. These plants have a variety of common names, in British English as bulrush or reedmace, in American English as reed, cattail, or punks, in ...

and native wetland grasses, which support larger numbers of several bird species than does the surrounding non-irrigated

bushland In Australia, bushland is a blanket term for land which supports remnant vegetation or land which is disturbed but still retains a predominance of the original floristics and structure. Human survival in bushland has a whole mythology evolving ...

and dry pasture. The cumbungi and grasses occur along waterways and the edges of Lake Kununurra, as well as in agricultural fallows. The average annual rainfall is 790 mm, falling mainly from October to April.

History

The irrigation and drainage

infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...

was constructed in the early 1960s, with commercial farming taking place from 1963 when Kununurra's Ord Diversion Dam was completed. Using water first from Lake Kununurra, and later from Lake Argyle, a reservoir formed by the completion of the main Ord Dam in 1972, some 140 km² of cattle grazing land became productive farmland. Farm blocks are typically 260-360 ha in size, on heavy, black cracking clay soils. The main crops include

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with ...

, sandalwood, fruit, vegetables and cotton.BirdLife International. (2011). Important Bird Areas factsheet: Ord Irrigation Area. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 12/09/2011.

Birds

The IBA supports the largest recorded numbers of

star finch The star finch (''Bathilda ruficauda'') is a seed-eating bird species found in northern Australia. It has a distinctive red face and bill, and broad white spots down its flanks. One of its three subspecies may be extinct. Description The st ...

es and yellow-rumped munias, as well as smaller number of Australian bustards, Bush stone-curlews, white-gaped and

yellow-tinted honeyeater The yellow-tinted honeyeater (''Ptilotula flavescens'') is a species of bird in the family Meliphagidae. It is found in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or tropi ...

white-browed robin The white-browed robin (''Poecilodryas superciliosa'') is a species of bird in the family Petroicidae. It is endemic to north-eastern Australia. Its natural habitats are forest, woodland and scrub, often near water. It formerly included the buf ...

s, masked and

long-tailed finch The long-tailed finch (''Poephila acuticauda'') is a common species of estrildid finch found in northern Australia, from the Kimberley region to the Gulf of Carpentaria. It is a predominantly fawn-coloured bird with a pale grey head and promine ...

es, and sometimes over 1% of the population of

Australian pratincole The Australian pratincole (''Stiltia isabella'') is a species of bird in the family Glareolidae. It breeds in Australia's interior; it winters to northern and eastern parts of the continent, Indonesia and New Guinea. It is a medium-sized nomadic ...

s. Other birds found in the IBA include

brolga The brolga (''Antigone rubicunda''), formerly known as the native companion, is a bird in the crane family. It has also been given the name Australian crane, a term coined in 1865 by well-known ornithologist John Gould in his ''Birds of Austral ...

little curlew The little curlew (''Numenius minutus'') is a wader in the large bird family Scolopacidae. It is a very small curlew, which breeds in the far north of Siberia. It is closely related to the North American Eskimo curlew. The word "curlew" is imita ...

s and black-backed bitterns.

Letter-winged kite The letter-winged kite (''Elanus scriptus'') is a small, rare and Irruptive growth, irruptive bird of prey that is endemism, found only in Australia. Measuring around in length with a wingspan of , the adult letter-winged kite has predominantl ...

white-quilled rock-pigeon The white-quilled rock pigeon (''Petrophassa albipennis'') is a dark brown rock pigeon with a white patch on its wing. It has distinctive pale lines across its face curving above and below its eye. It is a species of bird in the family Columbidae ...

varied lorikeet The varied lorikeet (''Psitteuteles versicolor''), is a species of parrot in the family Psittacidae that is endemic to the northern coastal regions of Australia. It is the only species in the genus ''Psitteuteles''. Taxonomy The first depictio ...

s, northern rosellas, bar-breasted and

banded honeyeater The banded honeyeater (''Cissomela pectoralis'') is a species of honeyeater in the family Meliphagidae with a characteristic narrow black band across its white underparts. It is endemic to tropical northern Australia. Taxonomy and systematics ...

s are occasionally recorded.

References

Kimberley (Western Australia) Irrigation in Australia Important Bird Areas of Western Australia {{WesternAustralia-geo-stub