A GIANT inflatable cow appeared at the corner of View Street and Pall Mall on Wednesday morning.
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Environment Victoria volunteers staged a protest calling on political parties to commit to protecting Victoria's rivers from livestock pollution.
The group has been travelling across regional Victoria, targeting marginal seats as they call for $30 million to fence water ways in the state.
Environment Victoria healthy rivers campaign manager Juliet Le Feuvre said rivers surrounding Bendigo had been impacted.
"Across Victoria, about four and a half thousand tonnes of cow poo enters rivers per day. There's quite a lot of grazing on the banks of the Campaspe, Coliban and Loddon rivers around here," she said.
"We've seen cows out at creeks at Axedale. They're in that water supply. Having cow poo and water ups the water treatment cost."
The inflatable cow was used to show "a cow in a highly inappropriate place", seeking to highlight the impact livestock can have on water ways.
Ms Le Feuvre said pollution from livestock was the number one cause of damage to riverbanks in the state.
"There's a really straight forward solution - you put up a fence, and you keep the cows out of the river systems," she said.
"We're not asking farmers to pay. A lot of the land on river banks is public land. There's about 17,000 kilometres of river banks on public land."
