Drones deployed to track Critically Endangered Australian parrot

06/12/2018

A new study has demonstrated how the use of robotics can become a key tool in the conservation of threatened species.

Swift Parrot is one of Australia's most threatened birds and is in need of urgent help, with BirdLife International estimating a total wild population of between 1,000 and 3,000 individuals. It breeds in Tasmania, migrating to south-east Australia for the austral winter, where it can be found sporadically from New South Wales west to Adelaide.

In 2010, Loro Parque Fundación started funding crucial field research by scientists of the Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University (ANU), triggered by the accelerating decline of the wild population, which has been classified as Critically Endangered since 2015.

What they discovered was alarming. They found that Swift Parrots prefer to nest in cavities with specific characteristics, and that only 5.2 per cent of available tree hollows were suitable in the Tasmanian forests. Worse still, they detected a high level of nocturnal predation on the contents of Swift Parrot nests, including adult females, by Sugar Gliders, a mammal species introduced to Tasmania from mainland Australia.

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Swift parrot polyamory a new threat to critically endangered species' survival

Shortage of female swift parrots caused by sugar gliders wreaking ‘havoc’ on mating

Calla Wahlquist

Tue 4 Dec 2018 17.00 GMTLast modified on Wed 5 Dec 2018 14.16 GMT

Tasmania’s critically endangered swift parrots are facing a new threat to survival – polyamory.

A study by researchers at the Australian National University, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, has found that a chronic shortage of female swift parrots caused by intensive predation by sugar gliders has wreaked havoc on the bird’s usually monogamous breeding habits and lowered the survival rate for young hatchlings.

Lead researcher Prof Rob Heinsohn said the unusual behaviour was caused by a significant disparity in the number of males and females in the parrots’ breeding grounds of the blue gum forests in south-east Tasmania. Surplus bachelor males were pressuring paired-up females for sex and getting into fights with paired males.

Heinsohn said that predation by sugar gliders, which were introduced to Tasmania from mainland Australia in the 1800s, had changed the gender ratio in the swift parrot population from a roughly equal number of male and female birds to three males to every female.

Females are at more risk from sugar gliders because the marsupials attack their tree-hollow nests while the females are incubating their eggs.

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Swift parrots bred on predator-free islands at risk of extinction

January 5, 2018, Australian National University

Critically endangered swift parrots. Credit: Australian National University

New research from The Australian National University (ANU) has found genetic evidence that critically endangered swift parrots, which breed all over Tasmania and on predator-free islands, form a single nomadic population at high risk of extinction.

Nomadic swift parrots breed across Tasmania wherever their food is most abundant.

Dr. Dejan Stojanovic from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society said DNA collected from nestling swift parrots showed those birds from predator-free Bruny Island and Maria Island were not genetically isolated from populations on mainland Tasmania.

He said the findings supported the need to manage the swift parrot population as a single unit, and that even local threats like deforestation and predatory sugar gliders may impact large proportions of the mobile parrot population.

"We already recognise the importance of predator-free islands as havens for swift parrots, but our findings demonstrate that protecting islands is only part of the solution to saving the parrots," he said.

"This new genetic evidence shows that islands don't support a genetically distinct subpopulation of swift parrots. Birds that nest on islands in one year may move to the Tasmanian mainland the next year, putting them at risk of being eaten by sugar gliders."

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Australian swift parrot listed as critically endangered

Tasmanian swift parrot has been listed as critically endangered, lifting its status from endangered

Date: May 6, 2016

Source: Australian National University

The Australian Government has listed the iconic Tasmanian swift parrot as critically endangered, lifting its status from endangered, following research by The Australian National University (ANU).

Dr Dejan Stojanovic from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society is part of a team that published the 2015 research which found the swift parrot could be extinct in as little as 16 years.

He welcomed the reclassification, which he said should provide greater protection for Tasmanian bird.

"The reclassification is a major milestone for swift parrots and highlights the importance of finding a solution to the extreme effects of sugar glider predation, and of protecting their habitat," Dr Stojanovic said.

"It confirms that the severe predation on swift parrots by sugar gliders is critical to whether their population survives.

"The next goal for our research group is to figure out what needs to happen to turn the swift parrot trajectory around, because they are only one step from extinction."

In 2015, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature raised the threat level of swift parrots in response to the new evidence provided by ANU researchers.

ANU research predicted the population of the birds will halve every four years, with a possible decline of 94.7 per cent over 16 years.

Professor Rob Heinsohn, also from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society, said groups such as foresters, environmentalists and members of the public would be severely affected if the birds became extinct.

"Swift parrots are major pollinators of blue and black gum trees which are crucial to the Tasmanian environment and economy including forestry and tourism," Professor Heinsohn said.

"We congratulate the Commonwealth for listening to the scientific evidence, and giving swift parrots a fighting chance."

Source…

Swift parrot: Strategic plan for endangered bird two years overdue

Updated 19 Jan 2016, 8:46am

A strategic plan for the endangered swift parrot has not been finalised, more than two years after it was due for completion.

The Federal Government allocated $300,000 for the Tasmanian Government to develop a strategic plan for the conservation of the swift parrot and its habitat in 2010.

The project was due to be completed in 2013 but there is still no final plan.

In a statement, Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment said Tasmania was operating within the draft plan.

"It is recognized that the draft requires updating to include latest information including on the threat posed to the species by the sugar glider," the statement said.

"The Tasmanian and Commonwealth governments are updating the plan."

The information that sugar gliders are a threat to the swift parrot has been public since 2012.

Greens senator Nick McKim accused the State Government of sitting on its hands.

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'Urgent' crowdfunding campaign hopes to help save three native birds facing extinction in Tasmania

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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Tasmanian government ignored expert advice on logging threat to swift parrots

Liberal government approved logging against advice from its own department that it could threaten the survival of the species, documents reveal

Oliver Milman

@olliemilman

Sunday 22 March 2015 20.12 GMTLast modified on Sunday 22 March 201522.54 GMT

The Tasmanian government ignored the advice of its own experts to push ahead with logging in the habitat of the endangered swift parrot, internal departmental documents have revealed.

The documents show that experts warned the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and the Environment of the impact of approving logging in five areas of forest in the state’s south-east.

In one area, called a logging coupe, the advice states that the felling of trees will “result in the continued loss of breeding habitat that has been identified as being of very high importance for the species with the further fragmentation of foraging habitat. This cannot contribute to the long-term survival of the species.”

The advice adds that the area earmarked for logging is “within close proximity to known nesting sites for the species.”

It warns that any logging is “likely to interfere with the recovery objectives for the species as outlined above. There is no scientific evidence to support the position that continued harvesting of breeding habitat will support conservation objectives for the species.”

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Forest loss linked to swift parrot mortality

5th May 2014

46 minutes ago

(Phys.org) —New research has found the endangered swift parrot is more likely to be killed and eaten by sugar gliders in Tasmania in areas where forests are disturbed or lost compared to areas of intact forest.

The research took place over a three-year period, and compared populations of swift parrots from mainland Tasmania where sugar gliders also live, to those on islands where sugar gliders are absent.

"Across the Tasmanian mainland, we found a link between deforestation and increasing predation on parrot nests by sugar gliders," says chief investigator, ANU Postdoctoral Fellow and conservation biologist Dejan Stojanovic.

"On offshore islands where sugar gliders are absent, no swift parrot nests failed due to predators, whereas on the Tasmanian mainland, sugar gliders caused the failure of 83 per cent of swift parrot nests, and in most cases, the adult female parrot was also killed and eaten."

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