Moments after NSW minister for primary industries and water Niall Blair’s office claimed up to 1800 fish had died on Lake Hume, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young took to Twitter to spread the “news”.

“Another mass fish kill, this time on the Murray River at Lake Hume. Our river system is crying out for help. The environment is in collapse. We need urgent action to secure environmental flows to give the river a drink. Cotton, corruption and climate change is making our river sick,” she wrote.

The ABC and The Guardian quickly picked up the story of the “mass fish kill” but, the trouble is, it’s simply not true.

The reality is that 50 or 60 carp, which aren’t welcome in the lake anyway, had died at Bowna Reserve.

That’s a far cry from 1800 and a damned long way from the million fish which have died in the Darling River system at Menindee.

The fish died at Menindee after hot weather caused a breakout of blue-green algae, which was followed by cool weather that killed the algae and took oxygen from the water.

That came as water flows were already very low due to the severe drought scorching eastern Australia.

Mr Blair said he wanted to highlight how common fish kills were across NSW when he pounced on a report of deaths in our region but as Albury Mayor Kevin Mack told The Border Mail, “fish kills on Lake Hume are as rare as houseboats”.

Left unchecked, the initial claim from Mr Blair’s office could do a huge amount of damage to our region’s tourism industry.

Ms Hanson-Young has more than 150,000 followers on Twitter and, by 7pm Tuesday, her erroneous message had been shared almost 500 times and liked more than 1000 times on the social media platform.

As a Greens senator in South Australia, it’s probably true that a large portion of those followers aren’t likely fishing tourists to the Border and North East region.

But even if they cost Lake Hume one tourist, it’s one too many.