Saving our Species: Success for the Glossy Black-Cockatoo

Over the past four years, Greening Australia has set out to raise awareness of the Glossy Black-Cockatoo, while restoring its habitat in the Canberra region and south-eastern New South Wales. We have reached the end of this ambitious project and are pleased to report some exciting and promising results.

Two Glossy Black-Cockatoos perched in an Allocasuarina. Photo: Lucy Wenger.

Background

In 2019 Greening Australia, alongside the NSW Government’s Saving our Species program and NSW Environmental Trust, set out to raise awareness of the needs of the Glossy Black-Cockatoo, and to restore habitat through the planting of forage trees, and woodland species. The Glossy Black-Cockatoo is no stranger to the threats of habitat loss and fragmentation. These birds rely entirely on Eucalypt hollows for nesting, which take at least 100 years to form, and their highly specialised diet consists almost entirely of the seeds of she-oaks which, being fire sensitive, were severely impacted by the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires. She-oaks also take at least a decade to start producing enough seeds to sustain the diets of these birds, so urgent habitat restoration was required to help this iconic bird species survive.

What did we do?

Landholder Antonia on her property in NSW, beside a successful Allocasuarina planting site.

For the past four years, Greening Australia has persevered through drought, bushfires, COVID, and persistent wet weather to complete this project. Monitoring of the birds in the Canberra region and South-East NSW, throughout the project, has provided valuable information regarding their distribution and abundance and identified important population hotspots near Windellama, Mulloon and Lower Boro. This allowed us to make more informed decisions about where to prioritise revegetation works.

Working alongside 38 landholders we were able to plant across 45 sites in these areas. Two of our participants, Antonia and Andrew Stephenson, run an ecotourism business in the NSW Southern Highlands, and are passionate about preserving and improving the biodiversity of their 80-acre property. In 2020, they became involved in Greening Australia’s Glossy Black-Cockatoo habitat restoration program.

With help from family and friends, Antonia and Andrew planted 300 Allocasuarina trees to create new feeding habitat for the threatened birds. The site was an ideal candidate for the project, with existing mature Allocasuarina trees at the back of the property and regular sightings of Glossy Black-Cockatoos on their neighbour’s property, increasing the likelihood of the birds finding and using the site in future.

While the wet weather provided some challenges with planting, it has allowed the trees to grow extremely well; they are now 2.5 metres tall! They will soon start producing cones, which are the Glossies’ primary food source.

Results

We have achieved some wonderful outcomes throughout this project. We planted a total of 17,400 she-oaks and other habitat trees, and monitoring has found Glossy Black-Cockatoos at 40 percent of participating properties. Although it’s too soon to know whether the Glossies will use the newly planted feed trees, we have recorded sightings of many other threatened bird species at the planting sites, including the Flame Robin, Speckled Warbler, Gang Gang Cockatoo, Superb Parrot, Scarlet Robin, Varied Sittella, Dusky Woodswallow and Diamond Firetail. A fantastic result in a short time frame!

We will be continuing to run our Glossy Black-Cockatoo monitoring program, so if you see any of these birds, remember to log your sighting here.
 
This project was funded by the NSW Government’s Saving our Species program and NSW Environmental Trust and delivered through Greening Australia’s Great Southern Landscapes program.

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