Meet the dazzling Paradise Parrot, Australia’s only extinct bird

If you happened to be wandering through the grassy woodlands of eastern Australia in 1927, you might have been lucky enough to encounter a colorful parrot, even by parrot standards. The Paradise Parrot, as it was known at the time, was a medium-sized parrot with a long tail and feathers of turquoise, aqua, scarlet, black and brown.

Sadly, if you did the same walk a year later, the chance of seeing a paradise parrot is effectively zero, as no live birds have been found after that date, despite extensive and sustained searches.

Fortunately, the paradise parrot is the only mainland Australian bird to have disappeared since Europeans colonized the island continent in 1788. Australian Ornithology Try to understand why.

Only one bird species became extinct (Paradise parrot, red beeResearchers led by John Wojnarski of Charles Darwin University said the extinction rate of mammals from mainland Australia contrasted with the much higher extinction rate of Australian mammals.

This is also in sharp contrast to the higher bird extinction rates in Australian island areas such as Lord Howe Island, Macquarie Island, Norfolk Island and King Island. All told, eight bird extinctions have been recorded in Australia’s island regions (excluding Tasmania).

The authors point out that the first bird extinction after European colonization was the disappearance of the flightless white chickens on Lord Howe Island from 1788 to 1790. Extinctions have occurred in most decades since, the most recent being the Norfolk Islands white-breasted whiteeye in the decade 20002009.

According to the authors, island birds are more vulnerable to extinction for a number of reasons, but mainly because they have smaller populations and occupy smaller geographic ranges. Human hunting is the most common cause of extinction.

The impact of hunting on island-endemic species is particularly pronounced, the researchers wrote, because many of the affected birds are naive predators that are flightless and have small population sizes that provide sufficient food resources to encourage hunting.

Successful environmental policies have curbed the impact of hunting on Australia’s bird decline in recent decades, but significant threats remain. Habitat loss, climate change and its multiple impacts (e.g., increasing wildfires), and the continued introduction of invasive species mean that bird extinctions are likely to continue to increase in the coming decades. Other research suggests four Australian bird species have a greater than 75 per cent chance of becoming extinct within the next 20 years: the Golden Island Brown Thorn, the Orange-bellied Parrot, the Golden Island Finch and the Western Ground Parrot.

Still, Australian birds are doing better than their counterparts in other parts of the world. For example, New Zealand lost 17 bird species over the same period, while the total number of birds was smaller.

Moreover, when comparing the extinction of Australian birds and mammals, the authors write that while nine Australian bird species (1.2% of Australia’s bird species) have become extinct, only one of which occurred on the Australian mainland, 33 species of Australian mammals are extinct (about 1.2%).

It goes without saying that we need to do everything we can to protect Australia’s precious aerial animals and hopefully preserve the Paradise Parrot, sadly nicknamed “Australia’s only lost bird”.

As ornithologists, we deeply regret that we now do not have the opportunity to see the beautiful paradise parrot or the peculiar white chicken. We should not deny our children the opportunity to see what exists now. […] The authors conclude that we can and must do better.