Marsupials tend get the spotlight, but one of Australia’s crowning glories has to be our parrots. Especially our cockatoos. They are colourful, characterful, noisy, beloved, and ours. But some of them, to our national shame, are now endangered.

In Western Australia, centuries of land clearing for wheat and other European-style farming enterprises have stripped the landscape of essential habitat. Carnaby’s, Baudin’s & Forest Red Tail Black Cockatoos are only found in the south west of the continent, and all three are threatened with extinction. There simply isn’t enough of the right kind of forest left to feed them, or to provide a safe breeding ground.

Enter the parrot champions. Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Conservation Centre in Perth is a specialised rehabilitation centre and is planning to revegetate two hectares of land with 2000 native seedlings. In twenty years, the eucalypt trees will be mature and producing food for the cockatoos.

Like most conservation-based organisations, Kaarakin, itself volunteer-led, relies on the goodwill and hard work of a small army of equally determined supporters to get its projects off the ground (or in this case, into the ground!).

Fifteen Trees knows all about the value of passionate supporters. This year, we partnered with Kaarakin to run a Pozible campaign. We kicked it off on World Environment Day (June 5^th), and it ran for three weeks. We offered lovely rewards from two of our wonderful partner companies – Tea Associates in Bendigo and Hattie and the Wolf in Ballarat – and Kaarakin itself committed Black Cockatoo calendars for some reward tiers. The goal was, of course, to raise money to plant trees. Five hundred of them, a full quarter of those required.

We are delighted to report that with the help of one hundred and nine supporters who all contributed between one and twenty trees each, we not only reached our target, we exceeded it. We are constantly both humbled and filled with hope by the generosity of a community that understands that habitat creation is a long-term project that we need to start right now. A community that knows if we don’t act now, twenty years down the track we could be telling our children stories about the last Black Cockatoo.

We are so happy that 518 of those 2000 trees have come from our wonderful Fifteen Trees family, and we send our thanks to each and every one of you.

Dear Pozible Supporters,

The trees have been planted with the help of host of volunteers. The site was prepared weeks earlier, and now that the trees have been planted, our wonderful volunteers will be keeping an eye on them and watering as needed.

An enormous thank you! Your generosity has provided our revegetation project with seedlings of jarrah, marri and sheoak. These seedlings will grow into trees which future black cockatoos will be able to use for feeding and roosting providing continued habitat for these endangered WA species.

Cathy Burns | Treasurer | Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Conservation Centre

 

For everyone who are waiting for calendars, posters, tea and cards; your rewards have been posted.

Writer – Sarah Hart.

Sarah is an artist whose passions include the stories and experiences of women and narrative driven creative work. Her aim is to delight, to reveal glimpses of everyday beauty, and to celebrate flights of the ordinary. Sarah works across a range of media, with an abiding interest in pen and ink, mixed media and the human form. You can find Sarah here.