Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00677:reg:12:p16
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2022L00677
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 12 (pt 16/33)
Character Range: 47281–50297

generally reduced the availability of roosting and breeding sites (Dunlop 2018).
             The consequence of this is the overfilling of the estuaries including the inundation of roosting and nesting sites on banks and sand-spits, and the loss of connection with the marine food-chain which provides the preferred prey species. This removes roosting, breeding and foraging habitat for Australian Fairy Terns leading to their disappearance from some systems (e.g. Wilson Inlet, WA) (Dunlop 2018). In other locations, the drying climate has reduced run-off into some estuaries, leaving entrance blocking sandbars closed throughout the year.

             In the Coorong, South Australia, water management (establishment of excessively high salinities) led to a collapse in the numbers of prey fish for 3–4 years at the end of the Millennium Drought in the southern Coorong, and a subsequent abandonment of traditional breeding sites (small islands in the southern Coorong) by Australian Fairy
             Terns (Garnett et al. 2011; D Paton pers. comm. 2020). Compounding the loss of foraging habitats, was the lack of secure islands free from predators but close to areas that still support reasonable abundances of small fish (Paton and Rogers 2009). When typical salinities returned at the end of the drought and had allowed the fish to return, the birds also returned to breed on islands in the southern Coorong.

   In Victoria, the decommissioning of a saltworks led to the collapse of active water management resulting in salt pans drying out. Once the site of a large breeding colony, Australian Fairy Terns abandoned the site as the previously isolated islands became accessible to mammalian predators and overgrown with vegetation.

         2.2.7     Pollution
   Australian Fairy Terns locate colonies close to prey resources (generally small schooling fishes) and can often be seen foraging within visual distance of nesting areas (Dunlop 2018). The 'baitfish' often concentrate around estuary mouths where there is enhanced marine productivity from the nutrient plume, or at temperature, salinity or tidal fronts that concentrate plankton (Dunlop 2018). Such areas are also potentially areas of compromised water quality from urban and rural drainage, acid sulphate soils,
   canal estates, boat harbours, coastal heavy industries and ports (Dunlop 2018). As such, these areas may be foci for the bio-accumulation of heavy metals and pesticides and the concentration of floating debris.

   At present there are no data on the contaminant burden in Australian Fairy Terns from different parts of their breeding range (Dunlop 2018). Little Penguins have a similar diet and foraging habitats to Fairy Terns and these show elevated levels of various contaminants around southwestern Australia, including Mercury in Cockburn Sound and Selenium in the Albany waterways (Dunlop et al. 2013). At the remote Abrolhos Islands, the binders in fabricated plastics (phthalates) were present in the preen gland