Desperate calls to prevent yellow-tailed black cockatoos disappearing from Eyre Peninsula

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Bird lovers and experts have sounded alarm bells over the disappearance of yellow-tailed black cockatoos from the Eyre Peninsula. Ecologists say bushfires and land clearing has decimated the natural habitat for the native birds and drastic intervention is needed.

Transcript

00:00This is the last known family of yellow-tailed black cockatoos on the Eyre Peninsula.

00:09I think the chance of the yellow-tailed black cockatoo surviving another ten years is pretty

00:14unlikely.

00:15Sadly I just think they'll be gone. We're so low numbers now, so yeah, I didn't think

00:21I'd get emotional.

00:24There are estimated to be fewer than a dozen of them left, with a century of land clearing

00:28and the 2005 Whangarei bushfire destroying their habitat.

00:32We're still living the legacy of what happened back then.

00:36National Parks have been monitoring the decline of the yellow-tailed black cockatoos for decades.

00:41The cockatoos have captured the hearts of the local community in the two migration zones,

00:46around the Kopyo Hills and Mount Damper region.

00:49This is them in some of the Aleppo pine trees.

00:53Marcia Jericho is known as the cocky lady. She ran a network of people who monitored

00:58the birds for several decades.

01:00The conditions of the day, which direction the cockatoos flew in from.

01:06And we were dropped off a calendar each year, a cocky calendar we called it, and whenever

01:11you'd hear them we'd rush outside and count them up and that.

01:14Over the years community members and park rangers have worked to try to repopulate them,

01:20including taking eggs to Adelaide to hatch and returning the chicks to Eyre Peninsula

01:24with little success.

01:25The young birds unfortunately hadn't learnt from their adults and were silly enough to

01:32do things like forage on the ground and get eaten by foxes, so their death rate was quite high.

01:39The experts say translocating adults to the region might be the only chance for survival.

01:44Perhaps we could find a benefactor who could take on looking after the cockies.

01:50But with the existing cockatoos on the Eyre Peninsula nearing the end of their lives,

01:54someone needs to be found urgently.

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