Orange bellied parrots' wild population doubles after scientific recovery program
Wednesday, November 26, 2014 at 14:18 
Orange-bellied parrot, male. Researchers have seen orange bellied parrot numbers double after the release program.One of the world's rarest species, the orange bellied parrot, has bucked its long-term trend of decline and almost doubled its wild population.
The critically endangered birds, which spend winter in South Australia and Victoria, have just migrated to the remote Melaleuca outpost in Tasmania's Wilderness World Heritage Area for the breeding season.
Last November, fewer than 10 wild breeding pairs returned to Melaleuca, prompting a recovery program to arrange for the population to be artificially increased.
Twenty-four birds were released at Melaleuca and now 34 have returned for the summer breeding season, which Rosemary Gales from Tasmania's environment department said was a significant boost.
"[Thirty-four] may sound like a really low number, but it's about double what we had last year," she said.
"Last year, we only had 18 return, so to have 34 is early days, but it is really encouraging."
About half of the wild population is male and the other half female, boosting hope there would be a strong breeding season.
"The exciting thing is that ... some of the adults that we released last year have undertaken the migration north and come back south, so that's a fantastic result," Ms Gales said.
"In addition, some of their offspring - so they fledged chicks at Melaleuca last year and those chicks have retained their genetic memory and successfully migrated back."
The birds are starting to pair up and lay eggs at the moment and conservationists hope to see many chicks hatch at Melaleuca next month.
More releases planned to bolster population
The Melaleuca release was different to other releases because wild birds were also present, to teach captive-bred birds how to forage for food and migrate.
The last release of orange bellied parrots (OBPs) at Birchs Inlet on Tasmania's West Coast was in 2011, but a population never established at the site.
"There were no wild parrots left in the area and so really it was a virgin site," Ms Gales said.
"We still have wild OBPs at Melaleuca and that's why we're now embarking on a series of translocations to try and get the species over the line before they go extinct in the wild."
The senior keeper at DPIPWE's Taroona aviaries, Jocelyn Hockley, said another 27 birds were released this month to further increase the species' wild population.
"We'd like to see 20 animals back, so 10 breeding pairs," she said.
Project decades in the making
The orange bellied parrot recovery program has been running for three decades across several states.
Ms Hockley said the released birds were from aviaries in South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania - the birds' natural habitat.
"The birds migrate over such a great distance and can spread over such a vast variety of landscapes on the mainland, from Victoria right through to the Coorong region of South Australia," she said.
The birds live for about two-and-a-half years in the wild, but one seven-year-old parrot has been at Melaleuca this year.