“Black cockatoos are really a flagship species,” she said. Lee said she hoped getting the local community involved in surveying the birds would make them invested in the species’ survival.
The Barnett government has spent more than $9m on black cockatoo conservation since 2008. He said the money would fund a two-year research project to support the government’s black cockatoo recovery plans. WA environment minister Albert Jacob said black cockatoos were “one of the most iconic species within the only globally-recognised biodiversity hotspot here within ”. “If it’s that bad for a bird like Carnaby’s, where all the work has been done in the past decade, then it’s not hard to imagine that for a bird like the forest cockatoos it would be worse.” “That means in the next two decades or so, if the rate were to continue, we would see a total collapse in population,” she said. Lee said monitoring of Carnaby’s cockatoos showed the population declining by a rate of 15% a year, mainly due to habitat loss. “The numbers for the forest red-tailed and long-billed black cockatoos are about 15,000 each.” With some species, there are differences between males and females with the crest or eye colour. With the attractive Inca cockatoo, the crest is a striking red and yellow, whilst the body is predominantly pink. “We estimate there’s between 10,000 and 40,000 Carnaby’s cockatoos in the wild,” she said. The sulphur-crested cockatoo, probably the most famous of all, has a white body and yellow feathered crest. They have been the target of conservation campaigns for the past decade.īut Lee said Baudin’s or long-billed black cockatoos, which are also listed as endangered, and forest red-tailed cockatoos, which are listed as vulnerable, could be under greater threat. Lee said the research project is similar to one being run to monitor the Carnaby’s cockatoos, WA’s other endemic black cockatoo species.Ĭarnaby’s cockatoos range from Esperance to Geraldton and are listed as endangered.
#Rare cockatoo breeds trial#
They will also support a netting trial in an attempt to reduce the “conflict” between orchardists and the Baudin’s cockatoo, which tends to snack on fruit trees.
“The idea is to develop a volunteer base who are able to go out and survey the birds on their own property in their own time to give us a snapshot of the birds that are there,” she said. She aims to recruit up to 1,000 volunteers to survey the black cockatoo populations in their local area to build up an estimate of the surviving population. Dr Jessica Lee, threatened black cockatoo project officer at BirdLife, said both species were endemic to the forests of south-western Australia, stretching from Bunbury to Albany, and their large range made it difficult to get an accurate count.
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