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Regent Honeyeaters to be released into wild (1 Viewer)

Rose Fletcher

Rose from Australia - formerly Birdeye
Copied and pasted from this morning's edition of the Melbourne Age, Victoria, Australia:

Backpack-bearing honeyeaters on a mission to boost numbers
BRIDIE SMITH
May 11, 2010

AS PART of the largest captive-bred release of its kind in the state, 44 critically endangered regent honeyeaters will be released into the wild tomorrow.

The birds - all banded and 25 of them boasting ''mini backpacks'' containing a radio transmitter for researchers to track their travels - are part of a national recovery program designed to boost the species' declining numbers.

Listed as nationally endangered, wild regent honeyeaters number fewer than 1000 in Australia, with just 100 found in Victoria.

Their numbers have declined because of land clearing, food scarcity due to drought and competition from more aggressive species. It is hoped the 44 captive-bred birds will breed with the wild population and deepen the species' gene pool.

Bred at Sydney's Taronga Zoo and Adelaide Zoo, the birds will be released in Chiltern-Mount Pilot National Park, north-east of Wangaratta. The program could also help researchers understand the species' yearly cycle.

''Regent honeyeaters move from north-east Victoria over summer, but we don't know where they go,'' said Department of Sustainability and Environment senior biodiversity officer Glen Johnson. ''We suspect it may be to the hills where flowering occurs later in the year, but we just don't know.''

Nomadic by nature, the birds act as pollinators for many flowering plants and can travel up to 500 kilometres in a couple of years searching for white box and mugga ironbark nectar.

''They follow the nectar and they will breed wherever there's nectar,'' Mr Johnson said.

It is the second release of captive-bred regent honeyeaters under the scheme, with the first batch of 27 birds released in May 2008.

The project - a partnership with numerous groups including Birds Australia, Taronga Zoo, DSE and La Trobe University - could track the banded birds for up to a decade.

The data will cover each bird's survival rate, movement and interaction with other species.

''Most of these birds are about a year old and they will live to about 12 years … so we have that period ahead of us to observe them,'' Mr Johnson said.

Birds Australia's national regent honeyeater recovery co-ordinator, Dean Ingwersen, said recent surveys suggested the wild population had continued to decline during the past five years.
 
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