Understanding how human activity, ecosystems and water interact at a catchment-wide level is vital to managing water quality. For more than a decade, BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) has collaborated on initiatives to better identify and model catchment-level impacts on water quality from existing or proposed activities. 

BMA contributed A$550,000 to the Fitzroy Partnership for River Health program and the Mackay-Whitsunday-Isaac Healthy Rivers to Reef Partnership for the delivery of programs in FY2025. A key goal of these partnerships is to provide a more complete picture of river and marine health – providing funding, resources and contributing water quality and ecosystem health monitoring data through data-sharing arrangements. 

The Fitzroy Partnership for River Health (Fitzroy Partnership), formally established in 2012, brings together government, agriculture, resources, industry, research and community interests across the Fitzroy Basin in central Queensland – particularly the Fitzroy River, which flows through the city of Rockhampton. 

The Fitzroy Partnership releases annual report cards on the status of aquatic ecosystem health indicators for the region’s freshwater, estuarine and marine environments. The report cards track the success of current management strategies in maintaining the health of aquatic ecosystems. The data underpinning the report cards is freely available for download, enabling analysis of specific parameters and trends over time. These report cards help provide accessible waterway health information to the community and aid decisions about local waterways. Read the latest report card here. 

The Fitzroy Partnership promotes citizen science by involving community members in local waterway monitoring and successfully implemented data collection across the 11 sub-catchments of the Fitzroy Basin in FY2025.  

Launched in 2014, the Healthy Rivers to Reef Partnership helps build an understanding of how climate, population, development, and land use affect our waterways at a regional level, to inform appropriate management responses and actions. The partnership also supports and coordinates a wide range of priority community projects related to healthy waterways and sustainability. The Healthy Rivers to Reef Partnership comprises organisations, businesses and government representatives focused on providing a complete picture of regional waterway health.  

In FY2025, the Healthy Rivers to Reef ‘Project Blueprint’ water quality monitoring and engagement in the Whitsundays continued to deliver positive outputs, including through direct engagement with and participation of Traditional Owners. Each month Gia and Ngaro Traditional Owners share traditional knowledge and stories with reef visitors on country and take part in water quality training and up-skilling.  

The Healthy Rivers to Reef Partnership helps drive education and engagement in STEM and science, using real-world regional data to deliver a leading schools program. In 2025, the program delivered 10 STEM workshops with a focus on water quality to schools in the Mackay-Whitsunday-Isaac region, engaging more than 350 students. Eighty-five per cent of students indicated the program was effective for learning about STEM and environmental science, and 76 per cent reported better understanding of STEM career pathways and related fields of work.