Threatened Species Day bake-off

What is the Threatened Species Bake Off?

The Threatened Species Bake Off is an invitation to Australians to bake a dessert in the shape of a threatened species. The Bake Off aims to build awareness in the community about Australia’s remarkable and unique threatened wildlife.

More about the bake-off here.

The background to National Threatened Species Day is to do with the tragedy of the last known Tasmanian Tiger that died in captivity. One might view it as a day of mourning, but the following story is one of hope.

King Island Brown Thornbill

The year was 1971 and two small brown birds were caught at Loorana, 10 km north-west of the Pegarah State Forest on King Island, off Tasmania. Those small brown birds were a subspecies of the Brown Thornbill. A small drab-brown bird with thin legs, and a straight, pointed black bill. This was the last record of the bird until 2001, when only several birds were sighted over the following decade. It was not a hopeful future for this bird that was only found on King Island and nowhere else in the world. Subsequently, it was listed as Endangered under Australia’s federal environmental legislation the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999.

Decades later in 2018, Hayley Geyle, Stephen Garnett and a team of conservation scientists calculated the extinction risk of Australian birds and found that the bird most likely to go extinct in the next 20 years was the King Island Brown Thornbill. Within months a team of expert ornithologists assembled and surveyed the Island to urgently gather information on the status of this species. The team recorded up to 50 birds. Subsequent surveys recorded more birds and now it is likely that the population could be made up of 250 birds. This was one of the biggest signs of hope for the thornbill as resources and management were targeted to conserve it before it was too late.

The biggest threat to this bird is habitat clearing, followed by increased fire frequency. In the future under climate change impacts, it is considered highly sensitive because of its vulnerability to climatic extremes that affect its ecology.

Kind Island is a Key Biodiversity Area because it is an important place for a range of bird species, and a future review of this KBA will include the King Island Brown Thornbill to ensure it is not lost like other endemic island subspecies. We must continue to adequately resource the conservation management of all Australian birds, even the ones that blend in with the background.

You can read more about the work to conserve the King Island Brown Thornbill here.

By Amanda Lilleyman

KBA Project Coordinator