Study: Australian can save birds
Despite recent drought, the study showed that the numbers of rare and endangered birds in Australia can increase when native trees are restored. Image: georgeclerk/iStockphoto Australia has a very good chance of being able to save most of its endangered native woodland birds, the findings of one of the biggest field studies ever conducted in Australia suggest.Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED), the Commonwealth Government’s National Environmental Research Program (NERP) and Australian National University have found that many native birds which were feared headed for extinction have shown remarkable rates of recovery on farms where regrowth and plantings of native trees are flourishing.In a huge field science effort, the team monitored no fewer than 193 sites on 46 farms across southern NSW over ten years, to study the effect on native birds of different ways of managing native vegetation.“It’s an extremely encouraging result,” says team leader Professor...