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| Night Parrot (Image by John Young) |
Updated 29 March 2019
Management plans to bring the Night
Parrot back from the brink will need to be revamped and the birding
community is set to be deeply divided after Australia's biggest
private conservation group dismissed a raft of records of the
critically endangered bird claimed by north Queensland naturalist
John Young.
The move by the Australian Wildlife
Conservancy, Young's former employer, means authorities will be
forced to consider whether the Night Parrot may be restricted to
tiny, remnant populations in the Pullen Pullen Reserve - owned by
Bush Heritage Australia in Queensland's Channel Country - and two
widely separated sites in Western Australia.
Young obtained the first photographs
of the Night Parrot in 2013 at Pullen Pullen - before the property
was acquired by BHA - on what was then the Brighton Downs cattle
holding. His discovery was of international significance; for more
than a century, the species was known from just a handful of
sightings and separate findings of two dead birds.
Young eventually fell out with BHA and
his co-researcher on Pullen Pullen, Steve Murphy. Young was hired in
2016 by the AWC to continue researching the parrot in Diamantina
National Park, which adjoins Pullen Pullen. Young subsequently
reported finding several nests and egg clutches of the parrot in the
park along with numerous sound and sight recordings. He also reported
the Night Parrot from Goneaway National Park, east of Diamantina, and
from Kalamurina, an AWC-owned property in northern South Australia.
Last year, Canberra scientist Penny
Olsen suggested in her controversial book, Night Parrot, that
the parrot photographed by Young in 2013 had an injured wing and was
set up for a staged photographic session, perhaps in an enclosure.
Young and fellow naturalist John Stewart, who was with him at the
time, insisted the bird had not been captured. They indicated they were surprised it
did not fly off at the time, instead allowing numerous photographs
and video footage to be obtained of the bird on the ground. Young tells supporters that the parrot may have been injured, which
would explain its reluctance or inability to fly.
Last year, the National Audubon
Society in the United States published a lengthy article on John
Young and the Night Parrot. An image of the 2013 parrot, provided by
Young, showed a portion of wire netting in one corner, prompting
critics to claim that he had, after all, caught the bird and
stage-managed photographs. Young insists to supporters that the netting was a corner of a cat trap that was strategically placed between spinifex
tussocks to prevent the parrot from scurrying away while photographs
were taken.
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| John Young |
Amid a furore on social media as
critics and supporters of Young battled it out over who was telling
the truth, Young resigned from the AWC last
September.
His supporters say he was
sacked. The organisation insists
he left of his own accord,
adding: “John Young was not dismissed. He offered his
resignation numerous times and AWC finally accepted.”
Young's critics upped the ante by circulating fresh allegations against
Young on social media. Young had claimed in 2017 to have discovered
the Night Parrot at Kalamurina. A camera trap at the site captured an image of a bird that was thought to be a Night Parrot in 2016. A feather found a year later in a Zebra Finch
nest by Young, subsequently sent to the South Australian Museum, was said to
be confirmation of the parrot's presence at Kalamurina. However, critics raised doubts about the provenance of the feather.
A Night Parrot call from an acoustic monitor at the site in 2017 was downloaded and published on the AWC website. Critics
pointed out that the recording was identical to that of a bird found in the East Murchison area of Western Australia earlier that year.
Young's
critics also cast doubt on the naturalist's many reports of the
species from at least seven sites in Diamantina National Park by turning their attention to
photographs published on the AWC website. A clutch of eggs from one
nest was asserted to be fake by some, including
Olsen, and questions were
raised about whether a nest in another photograph was that of a Night
Parrot.
The AWC responded by
establishing
an inquiry into the claims by a panel of four scientists: Peter
Menkorst (chair), James Fitzsimons, Richard Loyn and John Woinarski.
The panel did not investigate the wire netting in the 2013 photograph
because
that event preceded
Young's employment by the
AWC. The results of that investigation are now revealed.
In
relation to Kalamurina, the panel found that the feather lodged with
the South Australian Museum was not the same feather photographed in
the finch nest, adding: “Consequently, the
panel concluded that the feather provided significant but, given some
unresolved issues, not definitive evidence of Night Parrots at the
site.” Young tells supporters the Zebra Finch feather was genuine and that it was sent to the AWC and forwarded from there to the museum; he has no explanation for why the wrong feather was dispatched to Adelaide.
The
panel confirmed that the recording was the result of playback of
publicly available recordings of the Western Australian birds.
The panel concluded: “At
present, there is no reliable acoustic evidence for the presence of
Night Parrots on Kalamurina. This conclusion may change as results
from all deployed acoustic recorders are downloaded and analysed.”
That
process is continuing. Young tells supporters he may have played a recording of the WA call in the field at Kalamurina, which would have been picked up by the monitor, but he has no recollection of doing so.
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| Potential Night Parrot habitat in Diamantina National Park |
Referring
to claims about nests and eggs, the panel noted there
were “very few
Night Parrot nests and eggs ever sighted as a basis for comparison”.
The claim about false
eggs was referred to nine
ornithologists with “wide experience on the nests and eggs of
Australian birds”, along
with a long-term poultry farmer and a distinguished
bird veterinarian. Although not unanimous, a majority
of those approached
concluded that the “observable
physical characteristics of the eggs in one nest were not consistent
with natural eggs”.
The eggs in two other
photographs were small parrot eggs and “not inconsistent” with
the eggs of the Night Parrot, but did “not constitute robust
evidence of the presence of breeding Night Parrots”. The panel
found the nests were inconsistent in structure and placement, with
one nest being “substantially different” to the few confirmed
nests. The report of that nest should therefore be regarded as
unconfirmed until a larger number of nests are found, the panel
found, to achieve a greater understanding of
the variability in nest structure and positioning. Young insists to supporters that all his nest and egg records are genuine and that we would never have photographed fake eggs or manufactured a nest.
The AWC responded to the
findings by wiping all of Young's parrot reports from its records.
AWC chief executive officer Tim Allard said: “Due to the findings,
AWC is retracting records of the Night Parrot published by AWC. The
methods used in this work were not consistent with AWC’s usual
procedures... We are disappointed that our processes in relation to
this work were not sufficient, and we are committed to ensuring that
all of our staff implement and comply with appropriate standards for
recording significant scientific
data.”
However, the
AWC is ditching not just the parrot
records but any
other material gathered by Young, including the reported finding of
nests and eggs of the extremely rare Buff-breasted Buttonquail in
north Queensland.
Where
to now? Sight
and sound records of the species in Diamantina National Park reported
by Young, who provided a statement to the panel, were
corroborated
by a number of independent observers in
the field. The
records are now discarded, although
the bird was reported in the park by Murphy, Young's former research
colleague, and one of the two dead birds came from there.
It was in response to Young's
records that
the Queensland Government declared half the vast 500,000-hectare park
off-limits to the public, threatening jail sentences and hefty
fines for anyone entering its eastern sector. The state government has yet to indicate if it will revoke this declaration, which arguably will hinder further searches, in light of the AWC findings. The AWC will not say if it has passed those findings on to Queensland authorities with the self-evident recommendation that access restrictions in Diamantina National Park can now be lifted.
Dismissed also are records of
the parrot that Young
claimed
further east in Goneaway National Park, again
in the company of other observers. Knowledge
of what could be critically
important insurance populations
of the species is
extinguished.
Banished also are
the reports from South Australia. The
AWC has given no indication it is prepared to resume Night Parrot
research.
Just
as many were hoping the Night Parrot may be surviving in better shape
than feared, the result of
the AWC probe is to effectively assert that
the bird's confirmed
existence may not extend beyond Pullen Pullen - where fewer
than 30 birds occur - and the
two Western Australian sites, where even fewer birds are known. Birds at one of the those sites, in the
East Murchison, disappeared after one was netted and fitted with a
transmitter by a team headed
by Night Parrot Recovery
Team chief Allan
Burbidge in 2017.
Young and his supporters question
why that incident was not
subject to
investigation.
North
Queensland naturalist Lloyd Nielsen, who
has worked extensively in the field with Young, says he has no doubt
about the integrity of his friend's records. “I think it's shameful
and very disappointing that all that work has been discarded,”
Nielsen says. “These scientists might be experts in their own field
but when it comes to finding these things in the field, they've got
to rely on people like John. It's crazy to just drop those records.
He is one of the best field naturalists that this country has seen.”
Retired
James Cook University professor Peter Valentine, who
has been in the field with Young in Diamantina National Park,
criticised the AWC over the findings. “I wonder what good this will
do for the Night Parrot, the supposed focus of their concern?”
Valentine asks. “It is indeed disappointing but almost a foregone
conclusion given the animosity towards John by some people within the
ornithological world. I do not think this will do AWC any good… I
am confident the Night Parrot is at Diamantina as I have the evidence
of my own ears plus a full account of another person who was with
John when nests and eggs were discovered. Will AWC be brave enough to
admit error in the future?”
Here is the AWC's statement. This blog post was published a day before the airing on radio by the ABC of its
"exclusive" report . Unfortunately, media coverage of the AWC's inquiry has generally been ill-informed and unproductive. As a result, a view is circulating in the public arena that all records of the Night Parrot in recent years are fraudulent.
