Orange Bellied Story

[Mortisha]

Bit of extra commentary
http://bird-o.com/2012/02/09/obp-no-emo ... sie-media/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[desertbirds]

From the OB programme ..

Orange-bellied Parrot Project
"There seems to be a fourth breeding facility added to the OBP breeding program.... way up out of their breeding temperature range...NSW. Too hot , im sorry , they better have some good cooling devices during summer..."

Trying to find out more .....



Large parrot breeding facility in NSW is to be the fourth ...

Im sure a large breeding facility would have all that covered Jusdeb. There are (finch wise) birds being bred way ,way out of their range. A few spring to mind, Lessers, Beautifuls, White bellied Crimsons,Gouldians ect.
Ive taken all comments on board with this thread and i think there are a few very valid points and hopefully a lot has been learnt along the way. Habitat is paramount, without it any form of release program was going to struggle. I honestly believe if the authorities had involved a few private breeders in early days success on the captive breeding front would have been achieved much sooner and in all reality without trialing similar species.
Its very easy to be critical and like myself be an " armchair expert".
As ive previously stated on the forum there is a lot to be said for big fences/enclosures and setting aside large slabs of land to do so. I see the results every day first hand at work. We have just as an impressive collection outside the cages as we do inside. Its expensive but the results are amazing. Having a team of horti`s helps too.

[Danny]

I think they are still working on the vaccine ...

The vaccine has been ready for 20 years + - nobody want's to pay for it to be registered

[jusdeb]

Danny why does no one want to register it ? Is it money ?

[Myzomela]

Exactly,
The Australian bird market is too small to make the vaccine registration worthwhile.
The vaccine was successfully tested on cockatoos and another species which escapes me at present.
How would it work in Neophemas? vaccinating infected birds is useless- you need to vaccinate non-infected, at-risk birds.

The problem with the OBP is that we lose track of the birds for part of the year. When you don't fully understand the migration/life-cycle of any animal, then you have essential pieces of the puzzle missing so it's hard to make management decisions. And as stated, migration across Bass Strait will takes its toll on any species, let alone an endangered one.

Personally, after all these years of releasing aviary-bred birds and the population still falling suggests that this species is headed for extinction in the wild no matter what we do.

The question now is what do we do? Keep releasing birds and hope for a miracle that the population recovers? Or catch up what's left to have the maximum genetic diversity available to maintain an aviary-bred stock? If inbreeding depression is the cause of the infertilty of the captive birds then they are in real trouble. You can only take "fresh" blood from the wild for so long and they are all likely to be slightly inbred anyway.

There have been many "stuff-ups" along the way with this program, but you can't doubt the passion of the people involved.

If the right people were involved from the beginning- scientists, aviculturists and avian-vets- then I think this bird's predicament would have been much better today than it is. Where is a Don Merton ( of Kakapo fame- RIP) when you need one?

[Myzomela]

And just to stir the pot a little further...

It has been shown that the Beak and Feather Disease Virus isolate that was isolated from the captive bred birds in Tasmania most closely resembled an isolate obtained from cape parrots in South Africa, not any isolate of BFDV obtained from Australian birds. Also, there were 11 birds tested and every isloate was identical, whereas normally there is some genetic variability of the virus around the world.

This suggests 2 things:

Firstly, the isolate came from a break in quarantine. The virus probably came from an African lovebird and someone has brought the virus from a pet/aviary bird into the facility inadvertently, either on themselves or on contaminated equipment.

Secondly, the isolate is a recent one given the lack of genetic variability of the virus found in all eleven birds.

So somewhere, someone has stuffed up.

And to think, birds from this facility have been sent to all the other captive facilities...

[jusdeb]

Sadly they seem doomed ..Thats was very interesting Myzo ,thank you .

[MadHatter]

Just to play devil's advocate; it is also possible that the strain of BFDV may have been transmitted via some type of wild bird that contracted it from a captive lovebird or somesuch.

[Myzomela]

Possibly, but it is interesting that the South African strain has never been sequenced from a native parrot of any sort;

Given that BFDV is endemic in lovebird flocks and the number of potential wild parrot-captive lovebird interactions over the years, you would have thought that we would have seen South African-origin virus somehwere in our wild parrots.

But point taken Madhatter

[finchbreeder]

Anyone know how to convince Gina Rhinehart that she loves little endangered parrotts and that a small portion of her billions to register a virus for them and carry out a mass injection would be good publicity? Or any other of our 10 weathyest Aussies?
LML