Скачать или смотреть Aussie Kid Saves Native Fish From Drought

Here in Tenterfield in northern New South Wales, one teen is on a mission to save as many fish as he can!

STUART: I've just been getting them out of the river and just taking them out in to the dam and trying to keep them alive as much as I can.

13 year old Stuart has been racing to drying up dams like this one on his family's farm to rescue native fish.

STUART: The Mole River has dried up it's supposed to be an irrigated river and it's just gone dry due to the drought and there's just puddles of fish and I'm just trying to keep them alive. I've just walked into the water really and each time I feel a fish coming up next to me I just put my hands down and with the mud laying around I push their head into the mud and try to keep them as calm as possible. I just put them in a tub - put as much oxygen as I can in it and I take them out to a deep dam that we've got and I let them go there and just keep an eye on them everyday.

He says a neighbour taught him how to catch the fish by hand. Since then, he's rescued more than a hundred native fish but he's also getting rid of heaps of carp - a non-native pest species which causes lots of problems in rivers around Australia.

STUART: I've just been focussed on getting em all out really but I've caught over 300 carp out of the river which is just wrecking everything and then I've just tried to keep the catfish and cod as alive as possible.

But it's not always an easy task.

STUART: I caught a 123-centimetre carp and it just knocked me over like nothing really. I just face-planted into the water. Then with the catfish, every time I go grab them I just get spiked. And the cod, one grabbed hold of me hand and wouldn't let go and I was sitting there with the cod on my hand.

Like many people here in Tenterfield, and around the country, Stuart says he's desperately hoping for an end to the drought.

STUART: I'm praying a lot really so I can let em go and the river flows again and I can go fishing!


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