There is no doubt that the fire regime empoyed during land clearing and grazing times in Western Australia had a huge impact on the availability of habitat for Western Ground Parrots. The complex heath that WGP’s occupy is typically devoid of large trees and therefore easy to clear with few modifications for farming. Sadly the soil is very shallow and infertile and the pasture soon turns to dust, followed by flooding and soil erosion and eventially salt damage when the water table rises and carries with it the salt resulting from decomposed 4 billion year old rock. The chance for this land to return to suitable WGP habitat is very low. Due to the salt damage or salinity no replanting campain can improve the land. It is for this reason that the delicate habitat that remains must be protected at all costs. However, when fire is a major force in the environment and considered natural and essential for plant germination, you have a very difficult situation. Mosaic and patchy burn patterns allow the plants to germinate and parent stock of species to survive in nearby unburnt habitat. The difficulty for WGP’s is that if the vegetation is less than 5 years old they cannot nest of roost in the area. If it is more than 18 years old then the major food plants have been replaced by larger woody species. Such a problem may not be solved in a hurry and requires a continued effort over many years. At the begining of the project I started in Western Australia we had no idea of the habitat requirements of WGP’s and so we first had to set about asking the parrot “what do you actually want?”. The answer to that was three years coming and still the WGP is trying to tell us, calling every evening and morning. But are we listening hard enough?
The author apologises for the extented pause between entries but just started a new exciting job with mountain parrots and hasen’t sat down in 3 months.
Parrot Bloggers
Search by:
