Last-ditch bid to save rare parrots

CONSERVATIONISTS are renewing efforts to save the orange-bellied parrot from extinction, though some fear the species is now functionally extinct.

The rarest migratory bird in the world breeds at only one known place — Melaleuca in the state’s southwest within the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

“We’re down to the last of the wild birds and time is run- ning out,” said Mark Holdsworth, who headed the State Government recovery program for 22 years and is now part of the wider initiative to save the species.

“What we really need is several good years of breeding success for the species to ultimately avoid extinction.”

At the start of last September, the wild population numbered just 19 birds, comprising three females and 16 males, returning from their wintering grounds on the mainland.

Scientists on site at Melaleuca are currently planning the release of birds from captivity in September as part of a “ranching” strategy to avoid attrition rates of birds during their arduous annual migration along the West Coast of Tasmania, across Bass Strait, and into the saltmarsh wetlands on the mainland.

Precious, mostly female, juvenile birds born at Melaleuca, and which spent the winter in captivity at Werribee Open Range Zoo and the Moonlit Sanctuary in Victoria, will also be released in spring.

“We have to face cold, hard facts,” said conservation biologist Dejan Stojanovic, of the Australian National University’s Difficult Bird Research Group. “The time for business as usual is over. There is nothing left to lose.”

In 2016, the group led an ultimately unsuccessful approach to assist the parrots’ nesting process, which involved transferring tiny captive-bred nestlings from the DPIPWE breeding facility in Hobart to Melaleuca to be fostered in wild nests and to rescue struggling nestlings.

Scientists are now considering the transfer of captive eggs or older nestlings to be fostered by wild parents as a way to increase survival rates, though this has not yet been trialled.

It comes as construction begins on a new captive breeding facility for the species at Five Mile Beach and is expected to be operational by April.