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IGPC - Starting at the start

by Brent Barrett

When I worked in the outback on the south-coast of Western Australia I visited many schools. It was hoped that I could bring the conservation message to the families that lived on the border of the national parks. In essence a bit of home grown brain washing. I was also fortunate enough to visit aboriginal schools which were run and taught mostly by the aboriginals from the community. It was during this phase of my job that I devised a number of basic principles for the conservation of parrots (or species in general). It was not long until I realize that, while this was supposed be a simplification for children, it was in fact a compact look at essential principles that we managers need to ponder. I remember vividly trying to draw these concepts on the white board and having the teachers and leaders of the aboriginal school scream out the answer before the poor students had a chance. I guess thats the beauty of education its for all ages - all the time, you never stop being just a little bit curious.
You can apply these conservation steps to a number of complex problems, however there will always be some exceptions, although I am yet to meet many. Before we look at the principles lets explore the complexity of the problem. It is in fact the problems that blind us to the solution. You tend to get bogged down in the alternatives and unknowns and stop looking at the needs and rudimentary actions. It wasn't until I had to explain this to children that i saw how truly simple it was.
The Problems. In Tasmania for half the year the most endangered parrot of Australia makes its home and breeds. Then it closes up shop, flies the Bass straight to the south coast of Mainland Australia and settles down to wait out the winter. This wonderful migratory parrot is the Orange-Bellied Parrot (Neophema chrysogaster). The problem of a migratory species is vast, particularly when its migration takes it to the jurisdiction of another country/state where the same conservation laws do not apply, access is difficult and the same manager can only be effective for half the year. This is particularly true for whale populations that may pass Australia in order to calve in Tonga. You can have a situation where your legislation is effective enough at protecting the species but only after the survivors return from a migration event. Sadly the same is true for parrots. Luckily Orange-bellied parrots remain in Australia, however there are numerous examples of macaws and other rare parrots in South America which live along mans borders but refuse to recognize them. Birds have this funny tendency not to read road maps or carry passports. Consequently a reintroduction program requires the transport of a species across borders or conservation of summer habitats in Argentina are ineffective due to degradation of winter habitats in Brazil (for example).
Other anomalies that stump conservation are the ghosts. These are the species that pop up now and then to tease the human race but then slink away into oblivion. I cannot forget the searing heat of the desert of mid-west Australia. the thermometer was hitting 48 DegC in the shade and Death DegC in my body. We sat at water hole after water hole and watch them evapourate before our eyes. The skies and trees where full of Galah (Eolophus roseicapillus), Corella (Cacatua sanguinea), budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus), cockatiel (Nymphicus hollandicus) and Bourke's (Neophema bourkii) parrots all with gapping beaks panting like a hound dog in the summer sun. Why were we in this blistering death trap? What possesses a semi-sane man to convince him to give up on normal living conditions? The answer was simple, I was hunting a ghost. Nothing fits that label better than the elusive Night Parrot (Geopsittacus occidentalis). This desert nomad roams through the outback moving with the rains, following the semingly random seeding events of the desert spinifex grass. It has been spotted through the decades by very credible people, but never relocated, never photographed or recorded calling. There are still no leads as to where it lives, how it travels, when it nests. In 1990 a dead bird was found on the side of the road by a member of an expedition that was returning from a desert survey searching for this very beast. They stop to answer the call of nature as they made their depressed return journey and hey presto, there in the gutter was infamy in the form of a little green headless parrot. Luck struck again in 2005 when another headless specimen was found strung up on a fence in the desert. With these unrepeatable events the trail goes cold. I have assisted on two of the four Western Australian surveys and sadly we are no closer to the truth. Perhaps one day we will get lucky till then we chase ghosts.

The author does not intend to be even remotely political in this text, if you feel he is, then they are only his views and presented only to explain a more important (and less political) point.

Posted by Brent Barrett on 08/28 at 01:53 PM
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The Insiders Guide to Parrot Conservation Pt. II

by Brent Barrett

Rule Number 2: Bounce Back!

It rapidly occurs to one who finds himself hurtling at 10m/s/s through a 7m free fall that at some point the newsreel that is his life should begin. But it simply didn't, all I thought was "how did I get myself into this mess?" The impact came like a shock, like a wake-up call as sudden as a car crash even though for a brief moment I had been expected it. Sounds and vision came rushing back. I heard a loud huh! and realized it was all the air being forced from my lungs. You see I fell onto my head and neck but as luck would have it my large empty pack had slid over my head and my dreadlocks added to the cushion effect. Perhaps cushion is not the correct word. Suddenly I could hear and see again. Then it hit me... something that I had left trailing behind. Something doctors call the 'left leg'. Thats right after my neck then pelvis hit the rocks at the base of the cliff my left knee came hurtling down and cracked my rib. I essentially kicked myself in the ribs. I heard the deafening CRACK! Then I rolled painfull to my right and through a huge patch of stinging nettle.


Evidence of extreme impact.

Wait! This is becoming a ridiculous story. First a wasp nest, then a free fall, then broken bones and deep impact bruising and then I roll around in stinging nettle. You would be forgiven for assuming I am making this all up, believe me I wish I was. For at that very moment I was experience something akin to the fires of hell-and-brimstone. I lurched out onto the river bed screaming like an extra in a horror film. But sadly my ordeal was not even half over.

It would seem that falling and breaking yourself was the easy part, the hart part is staying alive afterwards and getting home to tell the tale. There I was is an unmapped river too narrow to land a helicopter and too thick to be seen from the air and I was hurting... bad! I had to get somewhere where I could be rescued before I passed out. So somehow painfully I put my pack on my back and wobbled 500m down stream to the open valley floor. Then I felt it was time to collapse. I was going into shock fast and need to get a bit of pro-active first aid going, warm clothes feet elevated and maybe happy thought. I triggered my EPERB, an emergency beacon we carry when on jobs in the back country. My radio was out of commission with a flat battery. I lay down on a huge flat rock and waited. The cavalry would be here soon, any minute now. They'll pick up the signal on satellite and beam the co-ordinates to Wellington and then the rescue helicopter will come and find me and save the day. And so I waited... and after five hours I faced the shocking realization. They weren't coming...


Evacuation time.

I was doing better in some ways and worse in many other ways. The shock had passed so I wasn't about to drop dead, but I could only breath through one lung as the other had closed down due to the broken rib. Some would say that one lung is a disadvantage if you where planning to do what I was thinking. Namely climb the 800m 70-degree trackless valley wall and crawl the 3km knife edge ridge to get to the safety of my tent and co-workers. I would have said that doing it at night might be the biggest handicap. But I had no choice. I stripped my pack to the essential, excluding the heavy and now useless radio, wrote a last will and testimony, put out the signal fire and started up to the bush line. It was tough at first then as the hours passed, well, it got even tougher. However there were two advantages of the night, firstly the cold air made for better breathing and secondly the total absence of wasps, for which I had formed a strong dislike. As I walked I got the stitch which held my broken rib in place and so reduced the pain. Eventually following 3 hrs of hard slog I reached the ridge, just 1km from the hut, and with a complicated system of flashing lights and yelling I raised the alarm with the co-workers, one of which was my partner Franny Cunninghame. I must admit at that moment the ordeal was nearly over, now the outside world knew I where I was and my partner knew I wasn't dead and so I may have shed a little tear, but in a manly way. I was aided the last 500m and lay in the hut for 24hrs to collect enough strength to leave. I then radioed for a helicopter and was soon being X-rays in the hospital. Talk about a tough day a work.


A reason for predator control (Mountain Parrot KEA).


The unsuspecting character in our tale.

The Author advises a Level 3 on this article.
(Level 3 = Don't try this at home)
Fine Print: The character in this tale is a trained professional, all events are real, there has been no embellishment as a result the author (and main character) does not advise attempting to recreate this event... EVER!

Posted by Brent Barrett on 08/22 at 06:24 AM
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The insiders guide to parrot conservation Pt. I

by Brent Barrett

Rule Number 1. Stay in the game!

I was once asked why I don’t take a desk job and quit all this fieldwork. The question was posed by a doctor who was in the process of answering my previous question, namely “why does my knee not work?” How could I explain to him that conservation, like war, is fought and won in the field, regardless of how many clever people there are strategizing the invasion or planning the means of defense if there aren’t any people on the front line you pretty much don’t have a war anyway. Likewise if no body is in the field monitoring endangered species population and intervening when required you might as well sit at home and survey for parrots using Google Earth. Face it there really is no substitute for time in the field. With that fact firmly established we reach the true crux of the problem. How do we stay in the game long enough to make a difference?

You need to be out there, hitting the track everyday with people of various ages to see the kind of damage we field biologist sustain in the “war on extinction”. Broken arms, torn knees, twisted ankles and strained ligaments to name a few. So rather than ask “why do we do it” we are forced to ask “how can we keep doing it?” How are there still people out there like my good friend Don Merton running around the hills at a ripe age of 60 something. When I look back on ten years of conservation work I have to ask myself was there ever a point when it was nearly too much. There have been many close moments including having to jump from a helicopter, side step an angry snake, risk the jaws of a grumpy sea lion or suffer the stings of a venomous spider. However while I’m not the crocodile hunter fieldwork does carry various inherent risks. That was why the events of March 2007 came as no surprise despite the unexpected way they unfolded.

I was working for the Research and Development sector of New Zealand’s Department of Conservation. We were taken by helicopter up to a hut at the 1000m tree line of Parapara Peak in limestone country.


The steeply cut Parapara Ranges.

We were given the task of setting out mammal tracking lines in harsh rugged untracked bush. The valleys were 800m deep and carved into bluffs and bottomless caverns. The vegetation was thick and at times impenetrable and my problems started with a wasp sting. Well 10 wasp stings actually, it appeared I had stood on a nest. My knees where seething with little yellow and black striped bodies. What could I do other than head straight for thick vegetation and push my way through. Theoretically the wasps can’t follow you, theoretically there is suppose to be solid earth on the other side. Yes it started with the wasps by perhaps it was cemented by the 7m cliff. Imagine, me there stretched out into the void with my foot hooked into a plant root and my back stung by the wasps that weren’t suppose to have been following me. It could have ended there but instead I reached for the base of a tree at the top of the cliff, released my foot just in time for the rotten tree to come away in my hand…

The good news was the wasps had given up the chase. The bad news was I was falling, quickly, into the darkness. Scheduled to land on the rocks 7m below me. So far I was sure to make that appointment but when my body flipped in the air and I was travelling head first and backwards I doubted that there was going to be an amicable outcome of the meeting of young Brent and Mr Earth. Suddenly there was darkness, had I closed my eyes? Was I blacking out? All I knew was the feeling of falling, the rushing of air about by body, the desire to have my feet lower than my head and the fact that all was silent and my eyes were filled with blackness. Then I hit! Hard! And everything changed…

Posted by Brent Barrett on 08/16 at 09:34 PM
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