help us save the glossy blacks

Helping save Australias rarest Cockatoo

The Glossy Black Cockatoo is Australia's rarest cockatoo and only found on Kangaroo Island a few kilometers off the South Australian mainland.

The cockatoo is listed as “critically endangered” with only around 280 birds left. It is the victim of extensive habitat clearance by humans, but not helping the cause is the Glossy Black's fussy eating habits of seed pods from only one type the drooping sheoak tree.

The Glossy Black requires human intervention to prevent its extinction by replanting trees on the mainland, and building nesting sites for breeding. The cockatoos will pair for life, and usually only lay one egg per year in trees that are at least 90 years old.

Chalk Hill Wines has joined the cause in donating 25 cents from every bottle of wine sold, making it the most generous per-bottle donation in the Australian wine industry.

So far, Chalk Hill donations have seen more than 50,000 trees planted across 100 hectares of the SA mainland in an effort to provide alternate habitat for the birds.

The issues at a glance:

• The Glossy Black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus lathami halmaturinus) is now found only on Kangaroo Island, having retreated from the South Australian mainland in the 1970's due to loss of habitat through land-clearance.

• Their nesting and feeding habitat is limited and any remaining trees are under increasing risk from fire. To bring the 'Glossies' from Kangaroo Island back to the mainland, habitat needs to be re-established on an extensive scale.

• The Glossies are very fussy eaters, their diet consisting only of seed from the cones of particular Sheoak trees (Allocasuarina verticillata). It takes 80 cones per day to feed one bird, and with relatively few Sheoaks remaining on the Fleurieu Peninsula, it is easy to understand why Glossies have rarely visited the mainland in almost thirty years.

• Over the past seven years, the project supporters have re-established 50,000 trees across 100 hectares.

• Because so many of our large Eucalypt trees have been cleared, there is very limited nesting habitat available. Nesting hollows big enough for the Glossy are created when large branches fall from gum trees. These trees take at least eighty or ninety years (but more often 100-150 years) to grow branches large enough for suitable nesting hollows to form when branches drop. There is then vigorous competition from many other birds and animals for the available nesting hollows.

• “Bringing back the Glossies” has seen the involvement of a number of volunteers and organizations other than Chalk Hill Wines, including more than 3,000 students and volunteers, the Coast Protection Board, Yankalilla District Council, Conservation Volunteers Australia, Green Corps and the Natural Heritage Trust.

For more information, go to:
http://live.greeningaustralia.org.au/GA/SA/On-groundaction/GlossyBlack/