July. August 71A
MONG THE ENDANGERED Australian animals that can’t
yet be reliably bred are Leadbeater’s possum, the central
rock rat and western ground parrot. Perth Zoo was
condemned in a 2018 newspaper article for taking 12 ground
parrots into captivity, eight of which died, six from disease,
without any breeding success. Peter Mawson, head of the breed-
ing work at Perth Zoo, seems relaxed when I mention this.
“Nothing was previously known about the breeding needs of
this bird,” he says. The best information they had was from a
1947 failed attempt to breed eastern ground parrots.
“We’ve got them to lay fertile eggs and incubate them,” he
says, “but not to produce hatchlings.” They are close, he hopes,
but ground parrots are difficult to study because they spend so
much time hiding behind vegetation. The zoo allows me to see
them, but only on the grey screen of a closed-circuit TV.
Peter sees no future for these parrots without intervention.
“We’re down to maybe a hundred parrots in the wild, maybe
120,” he says. A bushfire burnt through 85 per cent of their
natural habitat in 2015, and another fire hit after that. Cats and
foxes are other dangers. Taking parrots into captivity has
depleted the alarmingly small wild population, but may save it
in the long-term, if the breeding program works.L
IFE BEHIND GLASS OR wire is certainly not the end point
anyone intends for most of these animals bred in captiv-
ity. Enabling species to prosper again in the wild is the
aim. This means that for the western ground parrot, successfully
breeding the birds will be one step towards success rather than
success itself. The problem in Australia today is that the main
perils – foxes, cats, diseases such as chytrid fungus, fire – are
still out there, so releases into the wild often fail.
Some years ago more than 1400 bettongs from Arid Recovery
were freed in nearby desert habitat, on land from which most
of the cats and foxes had been removed. No bettong lasted more
than three months, a tragedy blamed on the few predators left
behind, which included dingoes. The hope had been that dingoes
would suppress the last foxes and cats rather than eat bettongs.
An earlier release of bettongs just outside the reserve fence,
into country with intense fox and cat control and no dingoes,
failed as well.
The bettongs killed in those trials eased crowding at Arid
Recovery, so their loss didn’t worsen the situation for the spe-
cies, which survives on five islands and in several fenced reserves.
The situation is much worse for the orange-bellied parrot,
PHOTO CREDIT: JANNICO KELK a species sliding backwards despite decades of earnest effort.
The western quolls recently released at Arid Recovery
are carefully monitored to ensure they are faring well.
Here Milly Breward records measurements taken by
Melissa Jensen.