For the birds
Port Moresby Nature Park’s new bird precinct
We would like to be able to successfully breed the national bird.
Papua New Guinea is home to 32 of the world’s 34 bird of paradise ( kumul) species, however the majority of research undertaken on this unique creature occurs overseas. Despite it being the country’s national bird, little is known about it.
Port Moresby’s Nature Park is increasing its focus on further research in a bid to change this, and become an internationally recognised breeding and research destination.
“For us, it’s about bringing it home,” says Michelle McGeorge, the park’s general manager. “Most ex situ research on PNG animals is currently done overseas, so the goal of the nature park is to bring research of PNG animals, especially the bird of paradise, back into the country.”
The first step is to have the right facilities. With help from its sponsors, a new bird precinct, Plumes of Paradise, has been constructed – a walk-through interpretive centre that showcases eight species of the bird of paradise, as well as other wildlife.
The PGK700,000 project has been two years in the making and was designed by the park’s curator, Brett Smith, purposefully planned with breeding in mind.
“Bird of paradise have quite a few requirements in order for successful breeding to occur,” McGeorge explains. One of those requirements is the height of the exhibits – many of the males need room to conduct their spectacular breeding displays.
“For a lot of those species, they want to do that up high, so the exhibits are tall,” she says. “We’ve also got special lock-off areas where we feed the birds, so when we start to see nesting behaviour of the female, we can successfully move the male into a different exhibit.”
That’s because the males tend to destroy the eggs.
“As soon as the female is not in her nest, she’s ready to breed again, so they have motives for destroying those eggs,” McGeorge says.
The park’s first aim is to successfully breed the raggiana species.
“We would like to be able to successfully breed the national bird and, as we’ve already seen them conduct nesting behaviours here in the park, we are confident it will be a success,” McGeorge says.
While she admits it will be challenging, McGeorge is confident that, with the new precinct, they will prevail.
“Some species have never been bred in captivity, so a lot of this is world first and trial and error,” she says.
“We’ve reached that maturity with the organisation that now we’re turning our attention to developing that conservation and research arm, and it’s bringing a whole new dimension of expertise to the park.
“We already breed the crinkle-collared manucode and are the only people in the world presently breeding this bird of paradise species, so we are really looking to build on this.
“The bird of paradise isn’t alone when it comes to a lack of data on the species – there is a lot we still don’t know about the country’s species in general,” McGeorge says.
“People always talk about PNG being the final frontier and it’s true,” she says. “There are very few countries in the world where researchers can go out into the jungle and actually find a dozen new frogs and dozens of new insects and butterflies.
“PNG is still finding mammals, different types of rats, recently a new species of wallaby was discovered, and it’s because we’re so diverse. Every mountain, every valley is its own ecosystem. We want to be able to build on this type of knowledge and lead the world in its research.”