The night parrot — it sounds like a crime-fighting superhero, and it's bathing in all the same fanfare.
The green, yellow, and black birds, once thought to be extinct, were recently documented in Western Australia's Great Sandy Desert, as the Guardian reported. The study of the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area covered 31 sites from 2020 to 2023, and researchers found the night parrot at 17 of them.
There were at least 50 individuals, by far the largest known population of the species, with fewer than 20 located in Queensland. The scientists used songmeters and camera traps to track the birds.
The night parrot and kākāpō are the only nocturnal parrots, and they are both vulnerable to predators. The night parrot is also susceptible to wildfire, though it is being helped by dingoes that eat predatory feral cats, Rachel Paltridge, an Indigenous Desert Alliance ecologist and co-author of the study, told the Guardian.
The study marked a conservation success story, and those involved praised the Indigenous rangers who help manage the land, wildfires, and wildlife at Ngururrpa. The knowledge they shared was vital to the study.
The night parrot is one of the rarest species in Australia, and the rangers, including Cindy Gibson and Clifford Sunfly, found 10 roosting sites. This helped the scientists conclude how to protect the population going forward.
"We recommend management that focuses on strategic burning to reduce fuel loads in the surrounding landscape, and limiting predator control to methods that do not harm dingoes," the authors wrote.
What makes the effort all the more important is the deaths of trillions of insects from Australia's Black Summer wildfires in 2019-20. Those tiny critters, of course, are important food sources for birds and other small animals. But the presence of so many night parrots shows that they are resilient creatures.
"It's an absolute fairytale in terms of conservation," ornithologist Steve Murphy told the Guardian.
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