#ARE GANG GANG COCKATOOS ENDANGERED UPDATE#

How did we get to this point? A lot of conservation work has been carried out to drive the recovery of parrot populations in the last decade, and there have been some instances of great success in with individual populations. Even more disturbingly, eight new parrots debuted on the threatened species list, five of them jumping straight to the Endangered category with a sixth, the Gang-gang Cockatoo, being moved officially from Vulnerable to Endangered under the EPBC Act, our national nature and threatened species legislation, in March 2022.

Four had their conservation status uplisted (shifted to a more threatened category) and while the other six retained the same categorisation, at least three were in worse shape, though not quite bad enough to warrant an uplisting. Of the 12 parrots and cockatoos considered Endangered or Critically Endangered in the 2010 Action Plan, only two have improved their official conservation status in the 2020 Action Plan, but one was on a technicality. Now seems a good time to see just how much has progressed in those tumultuous ten years. On winning government in 2022, the ALP pledged to review our national threatened species laws so that they actually protected threatened species. The Action Plan for Australian Birds 2020 was published. New conservation reserves were established, as were new parrot conservation charities and programs. A National Threatened Species Commission was established. Much of the country was gripped by severe and extended droughts and heatwaves, culminating in the calamity of the Black Summer bushfires. We were able to catalogue successful conservation actions for some populations and outlined what could be done to reverse the declines, vowing that BirdLife Australia would fight for the implementation of properly funded recovery plans.Ī lot has happened in the decade that followed. The article ended on a note of hope and a call to action. Nearly all of the dozen species were in decline and facing continuing threats such as habitat loss through clearing or out-of-control fires, competition for nest hollows including from other more successful parrot species, and predation from feral animals such as cats. I asked BirdLife Australia’s Head of Conservation, Samantha Vine, to co-author a state-of-play for each of the 12 parrots that had been identified by the Action Plan for Australian Birds 2010 as being either Endangered or Critically Endangered to gauge where we were at. It seemed that everywhere we looked, Australian parrots were in trouble.

Swift Parrot counts were down and Golden-shouldered Parrot numbers were dropping in their last reliable stronghold on Cape York Peninsula. Despite enormous efforts, Orange-bellied Parrots were continuing to decline with counts dropping below 100 individuals, while on the other side of the country a similar plight was befalling the Western Ground Parrot. We were also dealing with reports of Carnaby’s Black-Cockatoos losing more and more habitat to urbanisation and mining around Perth. Around the same time, BirdLife Australia was focused on attempting to resurrect the dramatically declining population of the Norfolk Island Green Parrot which, having already been brought back from the edge of extinction once, was now thought to be down to as few as 46 birds with perhaps only 11 females of breeding age remaining. While we knew that the Night Parrot probably wasn’t extinct, due to the fact that, rather ironically, two dead birds had been found in Western Queensland in 19, the news that controversial naturalist John Young had managed to find and photograph a live Night Parrot enthralled the bird world. One of the highlights of my time as editor of Australian Birdlife was publishing the first high-resolution photograph of a Night Parrot on the cover of the September issue. To receive our Australian BirdLife magazine, become a member today.

This story originally ran in our Spring 2023 issue. Now Sean Dooley reflects on our progress-and the failing nature laws that are pushing our parrots to the brink.

#ARE GANG GANG COCKATOOS ENDANGERED UPDATE#

Parrots in Peril : an update Ten years ago, Australian Birdlife published an overview of the conservation status of Australia’s parrots, finding th at 12 could plunge into extinction without conservation action.

Are gang gang cockatoos endangered