Across Asia: Australia

Food bowl under threat

Parts of Australia's key Murray-Darling river food bowl may be beyond recovery unless a prolonged dry spell and political wrangling over water use ends by October, a leaked scientific report warned yesterday.

"There has been 10 years at least that people have said you have got to restore the environmental flows to the system if you wish to keep the natural assets. We have failed to do that," University of Adelaide ecologist David Paton told local radio.