Can a last-ditch intervention save the orange-bellied parrot?

Not much larger than a common budgie, the orange-bellied parrot breeds in Tasmania's south-west wilderness over summer before flying north for the winter to fossick in the coastal saltmarshes of Victoria and South Australia. Over the past few decades, millions of dollars have been spent in an attempt to prevent these small, brightly coloured birds from becoming extinct. As well as monitoring OBPs in the wild, the Tasmanian government has bred an "insurance" population at the Hobart Wildlife Centre, some of which are released into their natural habitat annually to bolster numbers.

A male orange-bellied parrot in the wild – a sight that may soon disappear.

Nobody really knows why they're so endangered. It could be any combination of the loss of habitat due to land conversion, land clearing, invasion by weeds of their winter foraging grounds, increased predation on mainland Australia by feral animals, changing food availability, and catastrophic inbreeding due to their diminishing genetic diversity.

Read Nicole Gill’s story in the Good Weekend section in the Melbourne Age - “Can a last-ditch intervention save the orange-bellied parrot?”