Record number of endangered parrot fledglings recorded in breeding season

Parks and Environment Minister Nick Duigan said 74 fledglings were produced from 33 nest boxes.

This was good news to Orange-bellied Parrot Tasmanian Program project manager Shannon Troy, who said she could recall a time when there were less than 20 in the population.

"It's been a long time getting to this point and there were quite a few years where we were wondering if they were going to go extinct," Dr Troy said.

"Seeing the numbers of birds produced in the wild increasing and increasing is a really good feeling for everyone."

She said they had 82 adult birds return to Melaleuca on the state's West Coast in 2023, where they come to breed each year.

"The entire population migrates which is really unusual for a parrot, so from September onwards we supply them with supplementary food and feed tables designed to help their survival and breeding," Dr Troy said.

"Every single bird has uniquely coloured leg bands so we can tell which bird is which and count them; we have volunteers on the ground from September until April each year.

"They spend about four hours a day watching the birds and recording who they're seeing so we can count the number of individuals."

Dr Troy said while the population at Melalueca was going well, they were still losing a lot of birds during their migration and winter period.

"We're not sure where they're going and where it's going wrong," Dr Troy said.

"We've got a broad idea of the migration pathway along the west coast of Tasmania and the Bass Strait islands.

"But within that we're really not sure where they go, how long they spend there and where things are going wrong."

To counter this, Dr Troy said the parrots have been fastened with tiny transmitters on 46 of the birds this year.

"We've got 20 receiver stations spread up the coast and along the Bass Strait islands to try and protect birds during their migration so we can have a starting point to see how far north they're getting before things start going wrong," Dr Troy said.

"To really allow the species to recover we have to start getting a handle on what's happening during migration and start addressing the problems there too."