Creating a protected safe place for the endangered night parrot
In a remote corner of western Queensland on Maiawali Country, a committed team is working tirelessly to create a safe haven for one of the world’s most elusive birds—the night parrot.
In 2013, naturalist John Young recorded live night parrots on Brighton Downs Station—150 years after the last proven sighting. Three years later, Bush Heritage Australia bought a portion of the station and named it Pullen Pullen Reserve. In 2020, the Queensland Government declared Pullen Pullen the state’s first Special Wildlife Reserve, protecting 56,000 hectares of land and a significant proportion of the night parrot’s known habitat in Queensland.
Supported in part by funding from the Queensland Government, Bush Heritage has led the conservation work at Pullen Pullen, with guidance from the Maiawali Traditional Owners.
Dr Nick Leseberg has spent many years studying the parrot at Pullen Pullen, first as a PhD student at The University of Queensland and now as an ecologist for Bush Heritage. His research has focused on detection methods to understand how many birds are in an area.
“Earlier research showed only a handful of birds on Pullen Pullen in 2 sites,” Nick explained.
“The night parrot is incredibly tricky to spot. A nocturnal bird with distinctive yellow, green and black flecked colouring, it is well-camouflaged in the spinifex.
“To monitor where it is, we listen for its calls—a ‘ding-ding’ like that of a bell miner, a short frog-like ‘grieet’ and other three and four-note calls. We use remotely deployed digital recorders to gather acoustic data. By 2019, we were regularly detecting birds at 4 sites. Still, the population is only estimated to be 10-20 birds.”
The team has removed tens of kilometres of unnecessary boundary fencing—a threat to night parrots flying across the country in the dark. Western Queensland is also pastoral country, and some fencing remains to keep the cattle out of Pullen Pullen. On these fences, the team has used reflective tape to prevent birds from flying into the wire.
They also conduct a regular program of feral cat control activities. At the end of 2022, abundant conditions triggered a native long-hair rat plague. The increase in rats led to more feral cats—a potential threat for the night parrot. In response, the team tripled their planned feral cat control trips. Nick explained a typical trip would last for 2 weeks and may remove 10 cats, but in 2023, the numbers jumped.
“By mid-2023, our feral cat control trips were removing around 50 cats each,” explains Nick.
“Controlling feral cats is an ongoing battle and one of the most important things we can do,” Nick said.
“Cats will always be there, but our job is to ensure they have as little impact as possible, allowing species like the night parrot to recover.”
Ongoing research continues to benefit the night parrots on Pullen Pullen and the team is sharing their knowledge and survey protocols with others across Australia.
“From sharing the lessons learnt here, we have seen night parrots found in more than a dozen locations, mostly in Western Australia,” Nick said.
“Many of these discoveries have been made by Indigenous Ranger groups, combining our research with their knowledge of Country.”