Hope for critically endangered helmeted honeyeaters

Ask Victorians to name the official bird emblem for their state and few will know it’s the helmeted honeyeater. More affectionately known as a HeHo, this small, social bird has gold, black and olive colouring and a crown, or helmet, of bright yellow feathers.

Its habitat was once dispersed across thousands of kilometres of southern central Victoria, but less than 1 per cent remains, largely due to human-led land damage since colonisation, blooming populations of invasive species and climate change.

In 1989, the number of wild helmeted honeyeaters was estimated at fewer than 50 – or just 15 breeding pairs. Even after four decades of dedicated conservation and advocacy, there are still fewer than 250 of the species remaining in the wild – a statistic classifying it as critically endangered, or “facing an immediate and extremely high risk of extinction”.

Losing these iconic birds would represent not only the tragic disappearance of another individual species, it would further highlight Australia’s leading role in mass extinction events that we’re all increasingly forced to confront.

The honeyeater is now found in three contained areas: Yarra Ranges National Park, Yellingbo Nature Conservation Area and – thanks to the careful efforts of Zoos Victoria, Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal Corporation, Monash University and other partners – it has been reintroduced to Cardinia for the first time since the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires incinerated the region’s remaining HeHos.

In May, Zoos Victoria helmeted honeyeater field officer Dr Nick Bradsworth helped to coordinate the historic release of 21 young honeyeaters – hatched at Healesville Sanctuary – into the monitored ecosystem along Cardinia Creek, along the south-eastern fringe of metropolitan Melbourne.

Bradsworth has been working with threatened bird species for more than a decade. He fell in love with birds as a child – his interest grew alongside the aviaries his mother kept. “It’s birds, always been birds for me,” he says. Having completed his thesis on the urban movements of powerful owls, he now focuses on the newly released juvenile honeyeaters.

“We just have to be hopeful, have to keep trying,” Bradsworth says from his Healesville Sanctuary office, on a rare day he’s not doing fieldwork.

Cooperating in complex social groups for survival, the birds need to be close to fresh water. They also rely on midstorey vegetation, often protective prickly currant bush – a dense, fruiting native shrub – to build their nests in and feed on the red-orange berries.

“They also need eucalypt canopy to feed in,” Bradsworth says, “foraging for flowering blossoms and the small lerps, psyllids and other insects living there.”

He tracks the released honeyeaters via tiny radios – VHF transmitters attached to the birds’ tail feathers. Hours of observation mean he can distinguish each individual bird by the colour of its distinctive leg bands.

Speaking about the historic recent release of young birds into the Cardinia habitat, Bradsworth’s voice softens. “Look, it was a really special morning; many of the partners got emotional seeing the birds fly off.”

Project partners, including the Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal Corporation, Friends of the Helmeted Honeyeater, Parks Victoria and Monash University, attended a smoking ceremony and Welcome to Country led by Bunurong Palawa Traditional Custodian Josh West.

“It was really nice to release the young birds alongside the Bunurong Land Council, especially,” Bradsworth says. “Because if we didn’t have all this habitat destruction and clearance – all the damage – we wouldn’t need to be doing these releases.”

Three months after their release, Bradsworth says he works to remain positive despite ongoing challenges. Asked how many of the honeyeaters survived, Bradsworth says, “Twelve of the 21 released birds remain onsite.

Dr Bradsworth tracks the released honeyeaters via tiny radios – VHF transmitters attached to the birds’ tail feathers … He can distinguish each individual bird by the colour of its distinctive leg bands.

“But we’re really happy with that number,” he continues, explaining that unfortunately with any conservation translocation it’s a given that you lose a few individuals and that some animals disperse.

“I was tracking two piles of feathers for a while there,” he adds. “Unfortunately, we think five or six of the 21 birds have been predated by feral cats.”

Aware that cats – both domestic and feral – are a large driver of native animal extinctions across Australia, the partners to the conservation effort have been working together on a trapping program.

The feral cat suspected of recently hunting the HeHos was successfully caught and removed.

Jethro Sallmann, pest and wildlife team leader in the Balirt Biik team of the Bunurong Land Council, says working alongside Zoos Victoria has been a valuable experience.

“It was really special for us to work alongside Zoos Victoria’s threatened species team and to help with all the work that goes into reintroducing an endangered species back into the wild, back onto Bunurong Country.

“That’s essentially what we’re about: restoring Bunurong Country to what it was before colonisation.

“We got to learn from the zoos team about things like specialised breeding programs and species re-releases and, in return, they recognised our time as really valuable. I hope the collaboration, built on respect, is where more environmental programs are headed.”

The Victorian government’s Faunal Emblems Program – established in 1971 to protect the helmeted honeyeater and its fellow state animal emblem, the Leadbeater’s possum – has also helped with the restoration of select honeyeater habitat.
 

Providing more than just aesthetic wildlife imagery for corporate letterheads and thematic postage stamps, the Faunal Emblems Program lays groundwork for future significant conservation work.

Since 2018, more than $8 million has been invested in programs such as the recent coordinated juvenile honeyeater release, as well as a genetic rescue program run by world-leading experts at Monash University to help combat the dangers of inbreeding within the tiny surviving population of honeyeaters.

The present lack of genetic diversity has been shown to lead to shorter life spans and poor health in the birds. However, there is hope in the program’s progress. Genes from the closely related yellow-tufted honeyeater have been woven through HeHo populations – aiding the species’ resilience to threats such as climate change.

The project’s long-term goal is to establish five self-sustaining helmeted honeyeater populations, a task that will require continued monitoring, further releases and habitat restoration for many years to come. The strategies are in place and effective but take time.    

There are already plans to supplement the numbers of helmeted honeyeaters at the Cardinia reserve with additional birds – bred through the Zoos Victoria program at Healesville Sanctuary – in April next year.

New wetlands along Melbourne’s eastern fringe are also being developed using recycled water to establish honeyeater-friendly, climate-resilient swamp habitat.

Additional revegetation work is being done at bushland in Coranderrk – a reserve on the outer north-eastern fringe of Melbourne – for future honeyeaters, lowland Leadbeater’s possums, platypuses and other threatened local species that fall even further under the conservation radar than Victoria’s chosen fauna emblems: tiny native rodents such as the broad-toothed rat.

Given the scale of the conservation effort ahead, state and federal governments will need to take further significant steps to ensure future generations can see the bright flutter of HeHo feathers through binoculars, not just on expanding online extinction lists.

Jethro Sallmann hopes further funding enables them to keep contributing to caring for Bunurong Country – protecting and restoring country for generations to come.

“We have to work together,” he says. “Learn from each other. Move forward.”

Bradsworth counters the view that efforts to preserve the Australian emblem are too little, too late. He acknowledges, though, that the work will take years, even generations.

“This is really just the start. We’re going to keep building from here and hopefully we can create more helmeted honeyeater neighbourhoods throughout eastern Victoria – throughout their former range.

“The honeyeaters are already showing signs of natural foraging and nesting,” Bradsworth says. “It’s very promising for the zoo-bred birds, still not even a year old.

“It’s a long road but, again, we have to remain positive – we can’t just sit on our hands.” 

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on
August 9, 2025 as “Emblem of hope”.

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