Life Support in the Wild
- Gregory Andrews
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
#FloraAndFaunaFriday and the uncomfortable truth about Australia's Orange-bellied-parrot
I first met the Orange-bellied Parrot when I was Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner. Impossibly small. A small green and blue bird, with an almost defiant splash of orange on its belly.
I could feel how close it was to the edge - not just as an individual, but as a species. Back in 2015, there were only about 50 left in the wild. I remember doing the maths back then. If you added up the total weight of every wild Orange-bellied Parrot on Earth, it was less than a 3-litre bottle of milk. That’s not a population. It's a threshold.
Orange-bellied Parrots are one of only two migratory parrots in the world. The other is the Swift Parrot. Both are Aussies. And both are in serious trouble. Every year, these tiny little parrots breed in south-west Tasmania and then fly across Bass Strait to spend winter feeding in coastal grasslands on the mainland. It’s a journey written into their DNA from another era - a time when Tasmania was still connected to Australia during the last Ice Age. They're not just birds. They are a living memory of a different Australia.
Orange-bellied Parrot numbers in the wild are still perilously low. And here’s the part we don’t say often enough. Without captive breeding and release programs, they'd already be extinct. Full stop. The Tasmanian Government and Zoos Victoria have built one of the most intensive recovery programs in the country. Birds are bred in captivity, released into the wild, tracked, managed, protected. Every bird matters. Every breeding season matters.
The uncomfortable truth: functional extinction
There’s a concept in conservation called functional extinction. It’s when a species still exists, but no longer in a way that sustains itself or plays its full ecological role. That’s where the Orange-bellied Parrot is. Yes, they still migrate. Yes, they still breed.
But without constant human intervention, they'd collapse. That should stop us in our tracks. Because this isn’t just about one small parrot. It’s about the kind of future we’re creating.
There’s no single villain here. Just a familiar list: Habitat loss and degradation in coastal grasslands. Saltmarshes under pressure. Predation from feral cats and foxes. Disease outbreaks that can wipe out whole cohorts. And climate change, tightening every margin they depend on. None of this is new. We’ve known it for years.
But here’s what I hold onto. People didn’t walk away. Zoos Victoria. Field ecologists. Volunteers. Policy people. Communities. Governments. They’ve stayed with the Orange-bellied Parrot. They’ve persevered. And it’s working - not perfectly, not permanently, but enough to keep the species alive and to give it a fighting chance.
That matters. It proves something important: When we decide a species matters, we can act accordingly.
So here's the real question
This tiny bird carries a big truth. Extinction doesn’t always come as a sudden disappearance.
Sometimes it comes slowly. Quietly. Measured in grams and individuals and breeding pairs. Until one day, there’s nothing left to measure.
The Orange-bellied Parrot is still here. Just. But it also leaves us with a harder question. How many species is Australia prepared to keep alive like this? On life support. Managed. Assisted. Held just above the line.
Because if we don’t fix the systems - the habitats, climate change, invasive-species pressures, and the decisions that got us here - then the Orange-bellied Parrot won’t be the exception. It will be the model.
This #FloraAndFaunaFriday, I’m thinking about that. Not just the beauty of a migratory parrot flying between Tasmania and the mainland. But the fact that an entire species now depends on whether we keep showing up.
