National Program for Sustainable irrigation (NPSI) has established an Ecological Risk Assessment Project (ERA), the overall objective of which is to develop a generic framework for assessing the ecological risks associated with Australian irrigation systems. This new decision support tool should help the Australian irrigation industry quantify and prioritise the ecological risks from their activities, and better focus management actions to minimise these risks. This information should also provide ways for regulatory authorities (such as environment protection authorities) to better determine what needs protection and to use this as the basis for licensing and monitoring requirements