The return of a record-number of orange-bellied parrots to Tasmania has been celebrated as a success in efforts to save the endangered species.
A total of 92 birds have returned to Melaleuca in the state’s south-west after migrating to Victoria for the winter. T
Program manager Shannon Troy said an annual census on the birds revealed that the group consists of 55 males and 37 females.
64 were born in the wild and 28 were bred in captivity, with 25 of those released as juveniles and three released as adults.
“We’ve been slowly increasing since 2016 when we were down to just 17 orange-bellied parrots in the wild and only four females,” Troy said.
“This increase really is a result of the captive breeding and release programs that we’ve been doing over a number of years.”
Tasmania is home to about half of the national “insurance population” of 600 birds, with the rest cared for in sanctuaries on the mainland.
At one point, there were more people working on the orange-bellied parrot program than there were birds left in the wild.
“It really is a huge success for us to get to this point,” Troy said. “But the species is still in trouble.”
“We lost almost half of the birds on migration this year. That happens every year. We don’t know where they go.”
“It is somewhat normal to lose birds on migration, particularly birds in their first year of life, but we’re seeing a higher loss than we saw during the 1980s and 1990s when this population size was larger [at around 200 to 250 birds].”
Environment Minister Madeleine Ogilvie said the state government recently invested $1.3 million into the parrot migration tracking project, which attached trackers to 46 birds for the first time.
“One of our little birds has travelled 350 kilometres effectively in one go and travelled at speeds of up to 58 kilometres an hour,” she said. “I’m calling that one Rocky the Rocket for obvious reasons.”
An additional $2.5 million has also gone into building a captive management facility at Five Mile Beach to expand the captive breeding program and boost the insurance population.
