Night Parrot: Death by Barbed Wire

In a 2008 paper in Australian Field Ornithology that published the historic finding, Cupitt issued a clear warning: “It highlights the danger posed to birds, including rare or threatened species, by the many kilometres of barbed wire traversing the landscape.” Cupitt’s find led to the bird being photographed for the first time by John Young in 2013, and the creation of the 56,000ha Pullen Pullen Reserve encompassing critical Night Parrot habitat by Bush Heritage Australia in 2016. 

As I noted in an article in the latest edition of The Weekend Australian, another Night Parrot was killed after striking a barbed wire boundary fence on Pullen Pullen in 2019. With the region’s parrot population estimated at a total of 10-20 birds, that is a significant loss. Says Cupitt: “It’s barbed wire all the way along some of those boundary fences, including the top strand.” A barbed wire fence separates the 3-4 known roosting Night Parrot sites of the Pullen Pullen parrot population from each other and from feeding grounds they fly to each night. Until this week, BHA had little to say about the fatality (more on that later).

Outside Pullen Pullen, small numbers of parrots have been located in Western Australia. Last year, a Night Parrot was retrieved by traditional owners after being found injured, hanging by its wing from a barbed wire fence; it died soon after. The Night Parrot is critically endangered: we now know of three individuals killed by barbed wire fences, and the death toll is certain to be higher. 

In 2016, then Night Parrot Recovery Team Allan Burbidge head warned of the consequences of a plan by the Australian Wildlife Conservancy to build a predator-proof fenced enclosure in Diamantina National Park, more than 20km from Pullen Pullen. Said Burbidge: “It seems likely that a predator-proof fence within night parrot habitat might pose a threat to a bird that flies 15 km or so each night. For a population with perilously low numbers, the effect could be highly significant.” The plan was scuttled. Yet the recovery team has had nothing to say about the Pullen Pullen fencing.

BHA has run white electric tape along the top of some fences in a bid to deter parrots from striking them. In a statement published on the BHA website this week - following The Weekend Australian story - Pullen Pullen ecologist Nick Leseberg offers further details about the 2019 victim. Says Leseberg: “This section of the fence hadn’t been flagged, as we didn’t think it was an area where the Night Parrots would be traversing. By this time we’d removed tens of kilometres of unnecessary fence, including the entire southern boundary with Diamantina National Park, but this really brought home the risk these fences pose. We’d love to remove all of them, but the reality is this is pastoral country and we need fences to keep cattle out of Pullen Pullen.” 

Leseberg and his colleagues have done some fine research work on Pullen Pullen. They are not helped by the peculiar perspective that BHA has of public relations. The organisation has taken a leaf out of the Donald Trump playbook by ignoring journalists it doesn’t fancy - like me. BHA told me bluntly it would not be responding to anything I put to them. BHA’s silence becoming part of the story in the national broadsheet newspaper speaks volumes.

It also speaks to a cultural problem that has been evident since BHA’s acquisition of Pullen Pullen. The wider birding community is often regarded with a degree of contempt. Twitchers are collectively considered a potential threat to the species. Those outside BHA’s inner sanctum of scientists are unwelcome. BHA said this in a revealing statement last October: “In 2013, in the remote corners of western Queensland on Maiawali Country where spinifex grows in abundance – the perfect habitat for the bird – the Night Parrot was rediscovered by scientists.” It was in fact rediscovered in 2006 by Shorty Cupitt, and photographed in 2013 by John Young; neither are scientists. 

BHA refused to respond to questions I put to them about current population estimates; the consequences for the population of successive years of good summer rains; and the impacts of population booms of feral cats and long-haired rats in the area. Those issues are to some extent now belatedly addressed in this week’s statement. Leseberg confirms that the bountiful years of wet weather were a plus: “The floodplains were really benefiting from the exclusion of cattle and there were as many Night Parrots on Pullen Pullen and (neighbouring property) Mt Windsor as I had ever seen. There were four known sites with birds, and potentially two others where we heard birds on a couple of occasions. I think there could have been as many as twelve or fourteen birds across the two properties.” 

The good times led to a big increase in cat numbers. BHA tripled the number of planned cat control trips. Trips would typically be for two weeks, with each trip removing 50 cats by mid-2023. Says Leseberg: “It wasn’t all bad news though. The stomachs of the cats were examined to determine what they were eating, and we were only finding rats, nothing else.” By the end of 2023, rat numbers were dwindling and although cat numbers remained high, there was evidence they were losing condition with fewer pregnant females. Referring to the bird’s present status, he adds: “We’re still detecting them across three to four sites, but at some of those sites the detections are not as regular. We don’t know if these mean there are fewer birds, or if they are moving around more.”

It would be interesting to know if the long-haired rat plague had its own impacts, although that issue is not addressed in this week’s statement. Rats are voracious predators of eggs and nesting birds. Might that be a factor in the latest population shift that Leseberg refers to? Instead of regarding questions like that as threatening or inappropriate or whatever, BHA could be doing the bird a service with a little more inclusiveness and dialogue.