Bridgetown man fined over illegal cockatoo shooting
Friday, January 30, 2009 at 14:28 
Carnaby's white tailed black cockatoo is a threatened species.A Bridgetown man has been fined $3,000 for shooting eight protected white tailed black cockatoos at his orchard in February last year.
The Department of Environment and Conservation's Senior Investigator Rick Dawson said the Department continues to receive reports of some landowners killing the birds because of damage to orchards and other horticultural crops.
Mr Dawson is warning landowners that both Carnaby's and Baudin's white tailed cockatoos are listed as threatened species and killing them or harming them is illegal.
"During autumn and winter, the cockatoos tend to congregate in the Perth metropolitan area and the surrounding hills in search of food and this can give a misleading impression of the abundance of these birds," he said.
"The flocks observed in the metropolitan area actually represent a large proportion of the total population of birds from a wide area of the State."
Mr Dawson said both species of black cockatoo numbers have declined drastically over the past 50 years and the remaining birds had adapted their feeding habits to include pine cones and orchard produce such as apples, almonds, pecan and macadamia nuts and persimmons.
"This has resulted in damage being caused to some crops," he said.
DEC does not issue permits to destroy the cockatoos because of their threatened status.
However, Mr Dawson said exclusion netting keeps the birds away from crops.
"Cockatoos do not like to sit on the netting or feed beneath it and there are many examples where the nets have been 100 per cent successful in protecting crops from parrot and cockatoo damage," Mr Dawson said.
Anyone who has information regarding the shooting of the cockatoos is asked to report the matter immediately to a wildlife officer on 9334 0292 or 1800 449 453 after hours.