Australian Threatened Species Commissioner, Dr Sally Box, toured 52 Regent Honeyeater Recovery project sites in Capertee Valley over three days last week, September 11-13.
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The event was hosted by the Central Tablelands Local Land Services, Birdlife Australia and the NSW office of environment and heritage.
The Capertee Valley, north of Lithgow, is considered to be the most important breeding area in the country for the Regent Honeyeater, and volunteers and local landholders have played a leading role in the restoration of their habitat.
“The Capertee Valley is the biggest and best place for the bird,” consultant forester Dick Turner said.
Dr Box is impressed with the flourishing trees, planted in the mid 1990’s by volunteers, that are now playing a large part in helping the birds.
“We have recorded that five honey eaters have been using the trees that were planted back then,” she said.
Since the mid 90’s over 125 thousand trees and shrubs have been planted in the Capertee Valley with over 260 hectares being replanted in an attempt to support the critically endangered species.
The Regent Honeyeater is listed as critically endangered with an estimated population of just 400 birds remaining in the wild.
According to Senior Land Services Officer for the Central Tablelands Local Land Services, Huw Evans, one of the reasons the Honeyeater is in critical threat is because their breeding success was not great.
“They went into the [critical threat] threshold in the early 2000’s due to low rainfall and just really struggling with the breeding,” he said.
Lots of strategies have been put in place to improve their outcomes, including making habitation a priority as well as breeding success. Another main target was to introduce research satellite tracking.
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Hand tracking is hard because after the bird gets over the mountains the reception could drop out whereas satellite tracking allows them to watch from the computers.
“No one knows where they go so when they are feeding and breeding elsewhere we don’t know about it,” he said.
“You can’t glue a device onto a bird to track them because the bird will moult and it will fall off, so in the works at the moment is a harness bird-size back pack.”
The expensive technology will weigh about two grams so the bird will still be able to fly and it will allow researchers to get a better understanding of where the bird goes.
“We are working on strategic interventions in the short term and making planting important in the long term,” Dr Box said.
The Capertee Valley Regent Honeyeater Recovery Project has been supported by Local Land Services with funding from the Australian Government and Catchment Action NSW.
Birdlife Australia partnered with Toronga Zoo to send out volunteers every year during planting to help plant more trees for the bird.
“It is wonderful to see the partnerships between all the organisations and the benefits they bring,” Dr Box said.