Potential threats and habitat of the night parrot on the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area

Clifford Sunfly; Andrew Schubert; Angela M. Reid; Nicholas Leseberg; Luke Parker; Rachel Paltridge

doi:10.1071/WR24083

RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Potential threats and habitat of the night parrot on the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area

Ngururrpa Rangers ^A , Clifford Sunfly ^A ^B , Andrew Schubert ^C , Angela M. Reid ^B ^D ^E , Nicholas Leseberg ^F ^G ^H , Luke Parker ^B ^D and Rachel Paltridge

^C ^I ^*

+ Author Affiliations

- Author Affiliations

^A Parna Ngururrpa Aboriginal Corporation, 76 Wittenoom Street, Perth, WA 6004, Australia.

^B Ngururrpa Ranger Program, Balgo, WA, Australia.

^C Indigenous Desert Alliance, 9/54 Todd Street, Alice Springs, NT 0870, Australia.

^D Desert Support Services, Perth, WA, Australia.

^E North Australian Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance, Brinkin, NT, Australia.

^F Research and Recovery of Endangered Species Group, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld 4072, Australia.

^G Bush Heritage Australia, 637 Flinders Street, Melbourne, Vic 3000, Australia.

^H Adaptive NRM, 60 Ginn Road, Malanda, Qld 4885, Australia.

^I Resilient Landscapes Hub, National Environmental Science Program, University of Western Australia, M087, Perth, WA 6009, Australia.

^* Correspondence to: Rachel.Paltridge@uwa.edu.au

Handling Editor: Marlee Hutton

Wildlife Research 51, WR24083 https://doi.org/10.1071/WR24083

Submitted: 15 May 2024 Accepted: 21 August 2024 Published: 23 September 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Context

The Endangered night parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) is one of the rarest birds in Australia, with fewer than 20 known to occur in Queensland and, prior to 2020, only occasional detections from a handful of sites in Western Australia (WA). Here, we provide an introduction to night parrots on the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) in WA from the perspectives of both Indigenous rangers and scientists working together to understand their ecology.

Aims

We aimed to identify night parrot sites on the Ngururrpa IPA, compare habitat and likely threats with those in Queensland and identify appropriate management practices.

Methods

Between 2020 and 2023, we used songmeters (a type of acoustic recorder) to survey for the presence of night parrots at 31 sites (>2 km apart). At sites where parrots were detected, we used camera-traps to survey predators and collected predator scats for dietary analysis. Forty years of Landsat images were examined to assess the threat of fire to roosting habitat.

Key results

Night parrots were detected at 17 of the 31 sites surveyed on the Ngururrpa IPA. Positive detections were within an area that spanned 160 km from north to south and 90 km from east to west. Ten roosting areas were identified, and these occurred in habitat supporting the same species of spinifex (lanu lanu or bull spinifex, Triodia longiceps) used for roosting in Queensland. However, the surrounding landscapes differ in their vegetation types and inherent flammability, indicating that fire is likely to be a more significant threat to night parrots in the Great Sandy Desert than in Queensland. Dingoes (Canis dingo) were the predator species detected most frequently in night parrot roosting habitat and the feral cat was found to be a staple prey for dingoes at night parrot sites.

Conclusions

Our surveys indicated that there could be at least 50 night parrots on the Ngururrpa IPA, which is the largest known population in the world. Fire is a key threat to roosting habitat, occurring in the surrounding sandplain country every 6–10 years. Dingoes are common in night parrot habitat and regularly eat feral cats, which are only occasionally detected in roosting habitat.

Implications

We recommend management that focuses on strategic burning to reduce fuel loads in the surrounding landscape, and limiting predator control to methods that do not harm dingoes.

Keywords: applied ecology, conservation biology, conservation management, cross-cultural research, natural resources management, threatened species.

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