With fewer than 30 orange-bellied parrots in the wild, conservationists are not leaving anything to chance.
The critically endangered birds, which winter in Victoria’s rapidly-shrinking coastal scrubland, would ordinarily embark on the treacherous flight across the Bass Strait back to their summer breeding grounds in southwest Tasmania in the coming weeks.
Instead, 16 of the parrots will be boarding a private plane to ensure their safe arrival.
Ten of them are already used to the wonders of modern air travel, having arrived in Victoria via the same plane and spending winter in the lush and safe surrounds of Werribee Open Range Zoo. The remaining six were bred at the zoo and will join the wild flock in Tasmania.
It is one of an increasingly elaborate series of initiatives devised by researchers in a desperate attempt to prevent the extinction of the bird in the wild.
Other schemes afoot include smuggling eggs bred in captivity into the nest boxes of wild birds at Melaleuca, hand-feeding struggling wild nestings, and the expensive and ever-present captive breeding and release program, which has, unfortunately, tended to produce birds that cannot survive the 500km flight.
According to a review of Australia’s avian threatened species program, the orange-bellied parrot is the second most likely candidate for the country’s next extinct bird species, behind another Tasmanian species, the King Island brown thornbill.
They are already, according to orange bellied parrot expert Mark Holdsworth, “functionally extinct in the wild”.
Dejan Stojanovic, a member of the crowdfunded conservation effort the Difficult Bird Research Group, has previously noted that “a headwind on the Bass Strait could black out the whole species”.
“This species is on a knife’s edge right now,” said Dr Paul Eden, a vet at Werribee Open Range Zoo.
Eden completed the birds’ health checks this week in preparation for their interstate flight.
“We’re really pleased with how the birds’ health is looking,” he said. “Once we have the final all clear, they will be flown down to Tasmania. It’s a really exciting time.”