Part Two – The lights at the end of the tunnel are … “remarkable achievements”
In part one of this article we looked at some of the facts arising from the recent “discovery” of the Gouldian Finch at a Defence Housing Australia housing project in Darwin’s northern suburbs and asked the question, “So, how to account for the disparities?” we found in the various threat assessments applying to the Gouldian Finch.
So, how do we account for these disparities?
When in doubt on the facts I reckon it’s always a good idea to turn to science for guidance.
In their February 2023 paper published in Biological Conservation: Lights at the end of the tunnel: The incidence and characteristics of recovery for Australian threatened animals, John Woinarski and Stephen Garnett (both senior biologists based at Charles Darwin University) and their co-authors reviewed the status of a large number of species previously considered to be ‘justifiably listed as threatened, [that] have recovered’ over the period 2000-2022.
Of the birds covered in the study they note: ‘… eight bird species that have been validly listed as threatened by the EPBC Act have recovered to the extent that they no longer meet criteria for listing as threatened.’
The Gouldian is one of those eight species. The bases for the author’s conclusion that Gouldians no longer meet the EPBC criteria include an increase in their population and improved management of fires and habitat.
Another recent and authoritative source of material on Gouldians in the Northern Territory is the Strategic Regional Environmental and Baseline Assessment (SREBA Report) published by the NT government in April 2023.
The SREBA Report provides baseline data on a wide variety of species and resources in the proposed Beetaloo sub-basin onshore shale gas development area. The survey records of Gouldian sightings provide a valuable new data set for the species.
Both the Lights at the end of the tunnel and SREBA reports received local and national media coverage during February and April 2023 respectively and both are readily accessible online.
The oft-repeated—and as yet barely challenged—claim by project opponents that only 2,500 Gouldians remained in the wild—there are many more in captivity due to their popularity as a cage bird—was based on a 2008 World Wildlife Fund flyer that was well out of date and just plain wrong.
This number is misleading and inconsistent with the results of the more recent reports cited here and should never have been so uncritically promoted or received the wide coverage it has, and continues to receive.
Estimating Australian wild animal populations is fraught with difficulties but Birdlife International’s best estimate—citing both John Woinarski (as a contributor) and Stephen Garnett (as both a contributor and compiler of the report)—is of a wild Gouldian population between 5,000 to 50,000, with 25,000 mature individuals.
As Woinarski, Garnett and their co-authors note with cautious optimism, the instances of conservation success they document deserve our ‘acknowledgement and celebration,’ and some of which represent ‘remarkable achievements … from sustained and strategic conservation management.’
The opponents of the DHA project elevated the Gouldian Finch to iconic status as a sort of charismatic microfauna, not least due to the highly effective—though equally disingenuous—grass-roots community and social media campaign that was lapped up by ill-informed camp-followers and a largely compliant, uncritical and incurious mainstream media.
That media coverage focused on a few click-worthy issues: that the Gouldian was beautiful beyond reason and belief; it was “endangered”; and the DHA development at Binybara/Lee Point presented an existential threat to the species.
None of the project opponent’s claims about the wild Gouldian population or the existential threats posed by DHA’s Binybara/Lee Point development have a firm basis in science, fact or reason.
In August 2023 DHA announced it would has suspend work at the Binybara/Lee Point site until the end of March 2024.
