FEATURE


activities work. So what else for the future? I hope we have sufficiently demonstrated that breeding and releasing Gouldian Finches into a habitat which will not support them will not work. And that is without considering the problems associated with trying to teach them how to find water in the dry season or recognize predators etc, etc. The conservation programmes that have


worked well are where wild caught species are trans located into a suitable habitat. These are often islands or fenced off pieces of land where feral predators are removed and the habitat allowed to recover. So for example the Rothschild’s Mynah programme failed to work on mainland Bali, however a small number were trans located to a suitable, predator free offshore island where the population has now increased to 130 birds.


The STGF does not have anywhere near enough funds to attempt anything like this, however, it would seem that possibly the biggest thing holding back the recovery of the Gouldian Finch is the lack of nesting sites. Certainly we have demonstrated that where artificial nest sites are introduced we create a local population explosion. So for the time being the first leg of our recovery programme will be extending the range of our current known populations by installing nest boxes in new, but adjacent suitable locations. We have known pockets of Gouldians spread across the northern savannahs, so if we can extend these isolated populations out toward each other, eventually we could potentially join them up. So this is another way you can help. We can put up new nest boxes as fast as we can finance them. Mmmmm $$$$$$$$ please! And also we need lots of volunteers to come and help us with the annual census of our populations around Wyndham. We do this in the first full week of September every year. Contact David


Myers to book your spot. Not only will you help a worthy cause but you will also have plenty of fun, visit one of the most spectacular tree wildernesses left in the world and see loads of birds including 6 species of finch. We are of course trying our best to work on the fire problem. Getting all the various land owners, stake holders and organisations, who each have their own agenda, to work together is an enormous and difficult task which in all honesty will probably not be achieved without Federal Government involvement. However, we are plugging away and in some small way are making a little progress by working with the local authorities and land owners. We have a joint research programme into the effects of fire on the Gouldian finch with the local department of Ecology and Conservation scientist which will produce vital information as it matures. We also publicise the problem and are trying to get the Federal Government interested. It has been estimated that 8% of Australia’s carbon output is created by wild fires!!!! You would think they should be very interested! And, for our overseas followers, imagine an area the size of half of Europe, or the whole Eastern states of USA going up in flames every year. The problem is that Australia is so big and Gouldian finch country so wild that nobody notices. What I have not covered so far is whether aviculture could act as a potential gene bank and perhaps a current working example of this is the Spix’s Macaw which is now extinct in the wild. It would be nice to think that this could be a role for aviculture, but to achieve it would take a concerted effort by a large number of people and bird societies.


One of the biggest problems we face is a lack of genetically heterogeneity, ie rare birds kept in captivity tend to become too inbred. Some species can stand heavy inbreeding but most lose fertility and fecundity and just slowly die


BIRD SCENE 27


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