In 2011, Murdoch University welcomed a rather feathery young student – a newly hatched forest red-tailed black cockatoo chick named 'Little Red’.

Little Red was the first forest red-tailed black cockatoo nestling known to have been raised and fledged on the campus. In 2012, Little Red was joined by another red-tail nesting that fledged on campus, Kaarak – the Noongar word for red-tailed black cockatoos – as part of our large community of cockatoos on campus.

The campus is an important roost site for red-tails and Carnaby’s cockatoos. In 2010, 30 black cockatoos were counted on campus, in 2012 there were more than 90 counted.

Supporting a declining population

In 2022, the State Government through Main Roads and Public Transport Authority Metronet committed more than $1.5million funding to establish Murdoch University’s Black Cockatoo Conservation Management Project.

The project was designed for the research team, based at Harry Butler Institute, to collect data over five years, assessing major threats to WA’s three species of black cockatoo: Red-tails, Carnaby’s and Baudin’s by tagging and tracking their movements.

Lead researchers Professor Kris Warren and Dr Jill Shephard emphasised that it was important to find a way to manage development and growth in Perth and conservation synergistically.

“A large part of what makes Perth special is its unique and endemic biodiversity, which we are fortunate to have in our urban areas, including our iconic black cockatoos,” Professor Warren said.

Keep Carnaby’s Flying – Ngoolarks Forever

Carnaby's cockatoos have played a pivotal role in Noongar culture for tens of thousands of years, but habitat degradation due to development and climate events have left them, like the Baudin's cockatoos, Endangered.

Carnaby’s cockatoos signified season changes to Noongar peoples, and indicated the movement of salmon, the start of rain and the location of waterways.

In 2022, Murdoch University received a grant from Lotterywest to lead an innovative community action project: Keep Carnaby’s Flying – Ngoolarks Forever.

The Harry Butler Institute and School of Veterinary Medicine team worked alongside local governments, environmental and wildlife NGOs and Aboriginal organisations to help the much-loved Ngoolarks to thrive and survive in the city.

Aboriginal Elders and rangers informed best practices for revegetation activities and protecting foraging habitat, and the team worked to install bird water drinking stations throughout Perth.

2022 was also the year which saw SBS release the documentary Black Cockatoo Crisis which featured the expertise of Professor Warren and Harry Butler Institute’s Dr Jill Shephard.

Soaring into the future

Today, Professor Warren and Dr Shephard continue to undertake their research, using GPS and ARGOS PTT tags to track wild black cockatoos throughout the Perth-Peel region and the South West of WA.

Outcomes of this critical research will help State and Federal conservation agencies by informing their decision making relating to black cockatoo protection and habitat conservation.

The project has already delivered previously unknown information about black cockatoo flock movements and guided development planning on the Swan Coastal Plain and in regional areas.

Since 2015, Harry Butler Institute researchers have successfully deployed 144 tags and generated more than 270,000 GPS location fixes and 5,000,000 accelerometer data points for more than 87,000km of tracked movement.