Rather than seeing these little green parrots on a screen,
I was taken inside an aviary near Hobart to meet them and my
hair lifted when one f lew just above my head. That was in 2008,
and Sally Bryant, then manager of Tasmania’s Threatened
Species Unit, was upbeat. “In my opinion it’s a very robust
bird,” she said then. “Easy to handle, easy to keep in captivity,
easy to feed.”
That may be so, but in 2008 there were about 50 at their
natural breeding grounds in south-western Tasmania, and last
December, despite hundreds of birds having been bred in cap-
tivity and set free, there were only 18. Over the years, more
than 400 youngsters have been liberated at Birchs Inlet, a former
breeding site, to no avail. At the one site where orange-bellied
parrots still breed, Melaleuca (in Southwest National Park),
releases have averaged 22 a year.
This natural population should have swelled, for its problem
is not slaughter by predators but milder issues such as inade-
quate burning of its summer feeding grounds. It is, however,
difficult to save because it is a migratory species that heads to
the mainland for winter. Many fail to return, especially those
bred in captivity.
Ornithologist Mark Holdsworth, who has been involved in
the Orange-bellied Parrot National Recovery Program for
more than two decades, mentions other issues as well, including
the Millennium Drought, diseases and head injuries in captiv-
ity, and difficult decisions about how many to release and how
many to keep to bolster the captive population.
The work has always been hampered by its budget. The
aviary set-up allowed for only 80 breeding pairs, which meant
that one goal they set, a captive colony of 400, was never real-
ised. Speaking with the benefit of hindsight, Mark wishes they
had done things differently. As it was, the limited space saw
some birds kept in single-sex aviaries and denied any chance to
breed. “We’ve lost genetic diversity over the years,” he laments.
Mark hopes his new tactic of ‘ranching’ young birds, by
holding them captive for their first winter rather than letting
them migrate, will lift survival. But if, in spite of this, the wild
population is lost, captive birds will be sold to parrot breeders
and the orange-bellied parrot will live on as an aviary bird.
That will be something the breeding work achieved, although
it will be a sorry outcome for all those who gave their hearts to
have this species f lying free.72 Australian Geographic
PHOTO CREDIT: MATTHEW NEWTON/NEWSPIXSCIENTIFIC NAME:Neophema chrysogasterMark Holdsworth checks an
orange-bellied parrot before its release
at Birchs Inlet in Tasmania, in 2005.
Allattempts to re-establish the
species at this site failed.