By Johanna Nicholson
Updated about 11 hours ago
An international campaign has begun to help save three native bird species at risk of extinction.
The swift parrot, forty-spotted pardalote and orange-bellied parrot are all Australian native birds under threat from predatory sugar gliders.
The swift parrot breeds in Tasmania during spring and summer, nesting in old trees with hollows.
They migrate to south-eastern Australia during the cooler months, but many are not surviving long enough to make the journey.
Logging in Tasmania has meant the tiny birds share their breeding habitat with sugar gliders.
Researchers at the Australian National University (ANU) said the presence of the sugar gliders had been catastrophic for the species survival.
"They are able to get into the nest hollows of the swift parrots and the other hollow nesting birds," said Robert Heinsohn, a conservation biologist at the ANU.
"They get in there and they just wreak havoc and destruction," he said.
There are fears based on current figures the colourful swift parrot could be extinct within 16 years.
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