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Canberra Today 11°/15° | Saturday, March 30, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Can you help save the Scarlet Robin?

THE ACT Conservator for Flora and Fauna, Dr Annie Lane is asking the community to help the Government develop an action plan intended to help the Scarlet Robin (Petroica boodang) population avoid extinction.

“The Scarlet Robin is an iconic, well-known bird familiar to many Canberrans, but is at risk of extinction in the region in the next 25–50 years unless we take action now,” Annie said.

“To secure the species’ long-term future in the ACT, the Environment and Planning Directorate has developed a draft action plan that is available for community comment.

“In 2015, the Minister for the Environment, Simon Corbell, formally declared the species as vulnerable in the ACT based on advice from the ACT Scientific Committee.

“The decision was based on a serious long-term population decline informed by historic and current records and research.

“The main threat to the Scarlet Robin is the loss of its open forest and woodland foraging and breeding habitat and habitat degradation. It is also threatened by nest predation, including by the Pied Currawong, whose population has increased significantly in eastern Australia in urban and peri-urban areas.

“The priority is to arrest the population decline and maintain a viable, stable, wild breeding population as a component of the indigenous biodiversity of the ACT and region.

“The action plan aims to identify and protect breeding and foraging habitat critical to the birds’ survival and manage that habitat to reduce the threats. It promotes the survey, monitoring and research of the species to better understand its ecology and conservation, and to co-operate with other state and local government agencies to formulate and implement conservation measures.

“It is also important to increase community awareness of the need to protect the species in its habitat in the ACT and support community-based conservation action,” Dr Lane said.

Consultation on the action plan is open until 18 May 2016 at timetotalk.act.gov.au . For more information visit environment.act.gov.au .

By JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12093421

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