The Commonwealth Games will begin tomorrow in Melbourne with an endangered subspecies as its mascot.
While the fine print in some of the promotional material explains that Karak belongs to a subspecies of red-tailed black cockatoo, the general impression is that the entire species is close to extinction with fewer than 1,000 red-tailed black cockatoos surviving in the whole of Australia.
The official Games website states:
“With fewer than 1,000 South-Eastern Red-Tailed Black Cockatoos in the wild, the Games has extended a lifeline to the species by adopting it as the mascot ‘Karak’.
As a result of the growing awareness of the species’ decreasing numbers, government and private industries have offered funds and resources to create a breeding programme to save the cockatoo.” (Emphasis added)
In reality the cockatoo is not uncommon across much of northern, western and north eastern Australian.
According to The Australian Parrot Society it is only the small and isolated population of Red-tailed Black Cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus banksii graptogyne) which occurs in south-western Victoria and adjacent parts of the south-east of South Australia that is considered vulnerable to extinction. There are about 1,000 of these birds, hence the official script.
Not that confusion about the proliferation of the species is uncommon – copies of letters dating back to 1997 have been posted at the society’s website complaining that the Queensland Department of Environment had issued permits to farmers to shoot the cockatoos because the birds were causing crop damage.
The Commonwealth Games, like the Olympic Games, is about the best, the strongest, the most competitive. Why choose the most threatened subspecies of Red-tailed cockatoo as the games mascot?
As a nation, as a people, we seem to have to focus on environmental disasters, even at a time when we are celebrating achievement.
In adopting an endangered subspecies as a mascot and pretending it represents the entire species, government has announced an additional funding allocation of $1.3 million for the cockatoo.
At the launch the federal government Ministers, probably unknowingly, reinforced the impression the entire species is endangered with some of the following quotes from the media release:
“Australian Ministers for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Peter McGauran, and the Environment and Heritage Senator Ian Campbell, said the work was vital to the future survival of the species. (emphasis added)
“With less than 1,000 of these birds remaining in the wild, this important work will safeguard one of our unique species – now recognised around the world thanks to Karak, the symbol of the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games,” Minister McGauran said.
… Victorian Minister for the Environment John Thwaites said the main threats to the cockatoo’s long-term survival were the loss of the large hollow trees that provide nesting opportunities, the clearing of buloke trees and extensive hot fires in stringybark forests.”
This is part 5 of a series of blog posts on Species Vulnerable to Extinction, beginning here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jennifer said: “The Commonwealth Games, like the Olympic Games, is about the best, the strongest, the most competitive. Why choose the most threatened subspecies of Red-tailed cockatoo as the games mascot?”
Following this line of thought, they should use the highly competitive and successful cane toad as the mascot for the Commonwealth Games. (Preferably a pic of one of the newly evolving long-legged toads). The feeble Karak would have been an ideal mascot for the paralympics.
I was thinking more along the lines of the successful inland west Australian subspecies of red-tailed black cockatoo as the mascot.
An introduced animal bought over under the policy of acclimatization might be more consistent with the concept of a Commonwealth.
Acclimatization reflected the enthusiasm in the second half of the nineteenth century for introducing animals and birds that could be hunted or that reminded settlers of home.
The Samba deer, I understand, has adapted well to southern portions of the Great Divide and might make a robust mascot that reflected the colonial success that underpins the Games. Of course, the success of the deer is linked to the blackberry, another introduced species and so the mascot should wear a sprig.
Adopting a mascot, such as Karak, is nevertheless representative of our times and speaks emphatically to Detribe’s recent request for strong examples of public willingness to be hoodwinked. Only a people desperate for some semblance of environmental respectability could wave the ‘concern for threatened species’ banner in an international forum that celebrates the major cause of the mascot’s threatened status.
You may be interested in this quote from Tim Low’s “The New Nature, winners and losers in wild Australia” in his chapter on Bad Birds.
“Kangaroo Island is home to a clan of endangered glossy black cockatoos living far removed from the rest of their kind in eastern Australia. When Stephen Garnett wrote of their plight some years ago he suggested that fires (scorching their food plants) and honeybees (stealing their nest holes) were the main threat to their future. But after studying the birds first hand, he decided differently. The main problems they face are possums, corellas and galahs. honeybees came fourth.
The island had become a patchwork quilt of paddocks and forest that is ideal for brushtail possums. They graze the fertilised sheep pastures by night and doze the days away in nearby tree holes. But cockatoos need tree holes too, for nesting. When Stephen’s team monitored ‘glossies’ at the nest, eggs and chicks kept disappearing – and possum hairs left behind were the only clues. A remote camera filmed a possum evicting an adult bird. The verdict was clear. Possums were gobbling down cockatoo eggs and young and commandeering their tree holes”.
He also pointed out that galahs and little corellas, both originally outback birds that expanded onto cleared agricultural land, were going down holes and killing cockatoo eggs and chicks.
And this raises a very important issue in relation to threatened species. We ignore the impact of species that have done well from the actions of man. Corellas and galahs are not only common as muck but are also in substantial ecological profit. That is, their numbers and ranges have increased significantly over historical levels.
And despite very clear evidence that they are a key threat to a threatened species, no farmer in the country can just go out and shoot them. And no-one in the country can catch them, or breed from collected eggs, to sell on export markets that are eager to take them.
The respective state EPA’s and DEH have “nationalised” an entire industry and have not even maintained it under public sector ownership and control. They simply shut it down with the bluntest of instruments in a way that generates huge profits for smugglers.
The prices for these birds on overseas markets is higher than the landed price for a live sheep. But instead of a regulated commercial market that could provide more than adequate control of these predators while restoring the population of a threatened species, we get a drain on the public purse of a continual nature.
And one point on this supposedly isolated population of mascot glossies, these birds have a home range in excess of 100,000 hectares. So a 200km flight (6 x diameter of home range) in search of a new territory by adolescents would be par for the course. And that would easily connect them to the Grampians and the rest of the Victorian population. Unless of course, they chose to nest in a flock of corellas.
We would probably make a greater contribution towards protecting threatened species by listing all the species that have expanded range and population since settlement and removing all restrictions on their culling, taking and selling. This is clearly one very dead hand of bureaucracy.
So why are we not allowed to export “surplus” wildlife for the pet industry. Or even breed native wildlife for export.
One can poison and shoot galahs and cockatoos in western NSW with impunity, but not catch them and export them? Instead we have people smuggling doped parrots with high losses.
Our unique native rainbow fish and also those from New Guinea are major hits in the international aquarium industry. I assume the Australian ones have been smuggled as eggs.
Similar tale with the far north Queensland Foxtail palm- now all through Asia and Florida. Major export opportunity missed. Can anyone inform us of the logic or illogic. What’s the argument?
(To be clear – I am not talking about anything with an endangered status or free-for-all harvesting with no limits or monitoring either).
Sugar gliders, or pocket pets, are big hits in the US. There are numerous clubs set up, and breeding facililies where creatures like white morphs attract a lot of attention and money. There are books written for the home hobbyist on how to care for these creatures, without even a mention that they are nocturnal. They have little harnesses, and there are tips for how not to get them squashed behind the fridge or drowned in the toilet bowl.
The Australian rainbows would most likely have been captive breed and exported that way. In the meantime some of their wild cousins are suffering from competition with introduced species such as Gambusia and cane toads, habitat loss and so on. Do you want a message to go out with these exported species, or is it a case of ‘saving ‘ them from being shot by an angry farmer, suffocated in a tube, or neglected by someone in another country who thinks they look pretty and have novelty value?
I am not saying here that I am for or against, but rather that it is not as black and white as it may seem.
Hello Jennifer and thankyou very much for your stimulating forum. Have you seen the (privately-funded) RTBC Education Kit Online at Birds Australia? Link is http://www.birdsaustralia.com.au/rtbced/index.html
Readers might be interested to consider the kit in the context of any potential public impression that it’s a full species at risk. And if the sub-species and its preferred habitat type are indeed subject to attrition, who should do what (or not)?
Libby _ yes good point. There are downsides. If the pets are sold for a fair price that may be some detterent against abuse. Serious collectors go to considerable lengths to look after their acquisitions. But I accept that not all pets will be properly cared for. But flapping around in the dust with embedded shot gun pellets covered in ants isn’t fun either.
Many rural areas are struggling with terms of trade issues – anything that can diversify rural income and support conservation of wild areas, native vegetation and creeks in good condition (to some more specimens from) seems to be a good idea to me. So on balance why don’t we licence traders and legalise exportation under supervision, including some follow-up at the other end.
As for rainbow fish – I think you’ll fund there’s a fair bit of “exporting” in parcels and letters of eggs mops (very hard to detect and police).
I thought the name ‘karak’ was peculiar to the Nyoongar language of south-western Australia, but it is interesting to see that it may be Australia wide – is it? The name certainly imitates well the noise they make in the marri trees outside my house. I think these are the forest variety, and they seem to be plentiful, judging by the litter of nuts on the ground after they have moved on.
The Nyoongars have an interesting story about balga (grasstree) giving lots of fire to karak (hence the lovely red tail), but only a little bit to mowan (green parrot, males have small red patch above beak). Ever since, mowan has attacked balga, biting the leaves off, and sometimes causing balga to die.
Some people claim that parrot attacks on balga must be due to recent human damage to ecosystems and ‘biodiversity’. Which mythology should we believe? I prefer the Nyoongar version.
I don’t support the option of licensed traders in wildlife as it will immediately be turned into an anti-competitive instrument for exclusion of new entrants.
What we need is a detailed assessment of pre-settlement species density for each major vegetation type, and the range of variation in density for each part of the climatic cycle, for any given location.
And with this information it will be possible to identify the point at which peak populations are about to plumet due to drought etc.
This would enable a collecting season to be defined, not by calendar month but by position in the cycle.
It would also enable collection (bag) limits to be established on a per hectare basis.
And it could have two geographical elements.
1 prescriptions for species recovery over their original range, and
2 prescriptions for species minimisation over areas where their range has expanded.
Obviously, the mix of 1 and 2 above would depend on the extent of variation from pre-settlement norms and the extent to which other species are dependent on any improvement in subject species density since settlement.
It would mean no taking of species during the recovery phases of the cycle and a wide access to the resource during the brief periods when 80% of animals will die a miserable death by starvation in drought.
It would mean recognising a property right over the relevant wildlife by the landowner. But it would be a right subject to regulation of its exercise as to timing, proportion, extent and maintenance of life cycle and food chain relationships.
It would need a complete change in thinking to what passes for same at present. For example, firewood collection from dead trees has been discouraged, and even prohibited, for the stated purpose of protecting hollow logs for habitat purposes. Such firewood collection was labelled unsustainable despite the fact that most collection took place on sites with a very significant over-supply of dead wood due to past ringbarking.
Any “environmental duty of care” should not be applied to an anthropogenic surplus in an ecological value. The duty must apply with reference to maintaining some portion of the original dead wood volumes under firestick farming regimes.
And as one wag pointed out, “well if they are worried about stocks of dead wood then we can always kill some more to restore those stocks”.
OK Ian – now we’re moving (at least on this thread !). So what’s the conceptual difficulty at the Commonwealth level with responsible and sustainable exporting of wildlife for a Australian pet industry. Any prospects for movement or does it have to wait for the new nation of Tropicana !
A new NATION of tropicana? Just a state will do me fine. And as for conceptual difficulty, your guess is as good as mine. Most likely it is that Feds must deal with states on environmental issues and no states have raised the issue. And probably no-one else has either.
To accept that some species may be in ecological profit would stir up a bit of dust and the recognition that 80% of the population being protected at the start of an El-nino event could be sold off will also take some getting used to.
Concerns over treatment as pets etc may also end up overriding consideration of slow miserable starvation because the former is more familiar territory while the latter is standard out of sight out of mind stuff.
But at the moment, every state is hell bent on stripping away any semblance of a right in relation to property so about all we can do is keep tabs on the issue. A truck load of dead possums on the steps of parliament might kick it all along but I haven’t had too many volunteers for that stunt, yet.
What sort of considerations can you think might need to be included? Assuming that you see enough merit in it to keep looking at it.
Errr – is that Tropicana or Australasian Native Pets Inc. And Ian – we’re not going to market cetaceans OK – I’m drawing the line there. Dugongs OK – but nothing bigger !
Hang on, along with gang gang, major mitchell, king, rosellas, sulphur crested and yellow tailed black we used to get quite a few red tailed black cockatoos in central coastal NSW.
NPWS declare the black cocky as a “vulnerable species” but they would, wouldnt they?
http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/npws.nsf/Content/Red-tailed+black-cockatoo+vulnerable+species+listin