Urban cockatoos mask statewide crisis

Updated on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 7:52 by
City Parrots
Updated on Friday, January 6, 2012 at 0:01 by
City Parrots
Carnaby's Black-Cockatoo. Image by Ian AshbaughProtestors have hit out at the City of Canning over plans to fell more than 150 gum trees in Manning Road amid claims they were important foraging habitat for the endangered Carnaby's Black Cockatoo.
Some of the pine plantations have also been cleared and the remainder are likely to disappear to meet the housing needs of a rapidly-growing capital city. Flickr: Ken and NyettaWA Museum’s ornithology curator says black cockatoos, which once flocked to the Swan Coastal Plain in tens of thousands, could be extinct within 50 years.
A red-tailed black cockatoo in flight. (Credit: Peter Campbell/Wikimedia) They are the forgotten victims of the bushfires in southwest Western Australia - species of native animals and birds that may have been completely wiped out.
“We’ve designed those hollows on measurements we’ve taken of actual nests and then we did quite a bit of experimentation trying to find ways to keep bees out of wooden nests using different insecticides and all sorts of designs."—Professor Johnstone. Image by davidfntau.
A group from Murdoch University and the WA Museum have successfully encouraged a threatened cockatoo to breed for the first time in the metro area.