{"id":127061,"date":"2025-11-10T00:49:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T00:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/127061\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T00:49:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T00:49:12","slug":"eastern-ground-parrot-found-in-narawntapu-national-park-tasmania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/127061\/","title":{"rendered":"Eastern ground parrot found in Narawntapu National Park, Tasmania"},"content":{"rendered":"

The presence of an endangered and “cryptic” parrot species at a northern Tasmanian national park has been hailed as “very good news” by a bird expert.<\/p>\n

The Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service (PWS) said recent monitoring at the Narawntapu National Park on the state’s north coast confirmed eastern ground parrots in the area.<\/p>\n

It is the first time in decades the species has been identified in the state’s north.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The eastern ground parrot is endangered on mainland Australia, but has a population stronghold in south-west Tasmania. (Supplied: National Parks NSW, Dave Watts)<\/p>\n

The eastern ground parrot is an endemic Australian species. Although it is endangered interstate, it has a population “stronghold” in south-west Tasmania, which is part of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.<\/p>\n

In the 1991 book, The ground parrot, Pezoporus wallicus, in Tasmania, wildlife researcher Sally Bryant said the bird had few known Tasmanian habitats outside that region.<\/p>\n

‘It feels like another world’<\/a><\/p>\n

Volunteering to help save the critically endangered orange-bellied parrot is a dream job for these bird lovers, and they get to spend four weeks in one of the most beautiful parts of Australia while doing it.<\/p>\n

“The stronghold for the species is in the south-west of Tasmania where large expanses of habitat have remained relatively untouched,” Dr Bryant wrote.<\/p>\n

“The species also occurs in isolated pockets in central and eastern regions but these are small, fragmented and prone to local extinction.”<\/p>\n

Discovery of distinctive feather prompts action<\/p>\n

The PWS revealed the discovery in northern Tasmania last week, following months of monitoring in the national park amid bushfire fuel reduction burns.<\/p>\n

The Department of Natural Resources and Environment Tasmania (NRE) said one of its firefighters found a brightly coloured feather “which seemed out of place”.<\/p>\n

They said the feather featured “striking yellow banding”, distinctive of the eastern ground parrot.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The Parks and Wildlife Service’s northern fire crew installed a range of sound devices to detect the parrot’s calls. (Supplied: Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service)<\/p>\n

Sound recording devices were installed in the national park for two months, and scientists were able to match calls identified in audio of ground parrots at Melaleuca in the state’s south-west.<\/p>\n

“Interestingly, the calls differed slightly from those of the more intensively studied Melaleuca populations, which may indicate some evolution of dialect in the species,” NRE wildlife biologist Jarrah Dale said.<\/p>\n

Monitoring ‘cryptic’ parrot species difficult\"a<\/p>\n

Eric Woehler says the eastern ground parrot is a cryptic species. (ABC News: Jake Grant)<\/p>\n

Independent bird ecologist Eric Woehler said the discovery was “most remarkable”, and indicated the species was possibly more widely distributed than previously thought.<\/p>\n

Dr Woehler said the distribution of the parrot was hard to assess because it did not behave like many other birds.<\/p>\n

“We still don’t really have a full understanding of the distribution of the species throughout Tasmania, because it does require more than your average bird surveys,” he said.<\/p>\n

The secretive ‘bunyip bird’ <\/a><\/p>\n

The endangered Australasian bittern likes to keep a low profile and experts think there may be fewer than 1,000 left in Australia, but it’s now been spotted with chicks in unique wetlands still recovering from damming in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

“They’re not up in the trees singing away and showing themselves off to the world.”<\/p>\n

Dr Woehler said the parrot achieved its “cryptic” status by being incredibly well camouflaged with green and black feathers, staying close to the ground, and remaining relatively quiet.<\/p>\n

However, when not attached the parrot’s long, “almost neon green” feathers can be readily identified and indicate the bird’s presence in an area.<\/p>\n

“They’re pretty unmistakeable. If you see a feather from an eastern ground parrot, you’re going to know it’s an eastern ground parrot,” Dr Woehler said.Monitoring to continue\"Two<\/p>\n

Parks and Wildlife Service fire crews were doing routine field work in Narawntapu National Park when an eastern ground parrot feather was found. (Supplied: Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service)<\/p>\n

Dr Woehler said the discovery could be significant.<\/p>\n

If it can be shown there is a substantial population in the area, he said, it may help the species survive a catastrophic event, such as a bushfire.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, Dr Woehler said it was not yet clear if this discovery was the result of habitat changes around the state, a lack of recent surveys of the bird in the area, or significant rainfall in the north over winter.<\/p>\n

“It’s hard to disentangle all of these things without a bit of analysis,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But, fundamentally, this is a very good news story.”<\/p>\n

Dr Dale said further monitoring and recording of the parrots was being planned in the state’s north, which would help underpin future population management.<\/p>\n

NRE also called on any citizen scientists to report possible sightings of the eastern ground parrot to help expand the records.<\/p>\n

“The park has five known species of parrot, and staff are hopeful this initiative will increase this dataset and broaden understanding of how ground parrots and their kin use the park,” Dr Dale said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The presence of an endangered and “cryptic” parrot species at a northern Tasmanian national park has been hailed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[88205,28622,273,88206,88207,88208,111,139,69,147,3649,9997],"class_list":{"0":"post-127061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-eastern-ground-parrot","9":"tag-endangered","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-ground-parrot","12":"tag-narawantapu","13":"tag-national-park","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-science","18":"tag-species","19":"tag-tasmania"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}