Bird lovers and experts have sounded alarm bells over the disappearance of yellow-tailed black cockatoos from the Eyre Peninsula. Ecologists say bushfires and land clearing has decimated the natural habitat for the native birds and drastic intervention is needed.
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00:00This is the last known family of yellow-tailed black cockatoos on the Eyre Peninsula.
00:09I think the chance of the yellow-tailed black cockatoo surviving another ten years is pretty
00:14unlikely.
00:15Sadly I just think they'll be gone. We're so low numbers now, so yeah, I didn't think
00:21I'd get emotional.
00:24There are estimated to be fewer than a dozen of them left, with a century of land clearing
00:28and the 2005 Whangarei bushfire destroying their habitat.
00:32We're still living the legacy of what happened back then.
00:36National Parks have been monitoring the decline of the yellow-tailed black cockatoos for decades.
00:41The cockatoos have captured the hearts of the local community in the two migration zones,
00:46around the Kopyo Hills and Mount Damper region.
00:49This is them in some of the Aleppo pine trees.
00:53Marcia Jericho is known as the cocky lady. She ran a network of people who monitored
00:58the birds for several decades.
01:00The conditions of the day, which direction the cockatoos flew in from.
01:06And we were dropped off a calendar each year, a cocky calendar we called it, and whenever
01:11you'd hear them we'd rush outside and count them up and that.
01:14Over the years community members and park rangers have worked to try to repopulate them,
01:20including taking eggs to Adelaide to hatch and returning the chicks to Eyre Peninsula
01:24with little success.
01:25The young birds unfortunately hadn't learnt from their adults and were silly enough to
01:32do things like forage on the ground and get eaten by foxes, so their death rate was quite high.
01:39The experts say translocating adults to the region might be the only chance for survival.
01:44Perhaps we could find a benefactor who could take on looking after the cockies.
01:50But with the existing cockatoos on the Eyre Peninsula nearing the end of their lives,
01:54someone needs to be found urgently.