The destruction of Western Australia’s northern jarrah forests for bauxite mining will push a threatened black cockatoo “to and beyond the brink of extinction” if governments allowed it to continue, conservationists have warned.
Mark Henryon, a volunteer with Birdlife Western Australia, said there was a clear choice that would decide whether the endangered Baudin’s black cockatoo would survive. “Baudin’s or bauxite – we can’t have both,” he said.
Henryon has spent years advocating for better protection of what he describes as the state’s “forgotten” black cockatoo.
The dark-feathered, white-cheeked bird with a call like a squeaky gate is endemic to the state’s south west.
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Compared with the higher profile Carnaby’s black cockatoo, the Baudin’s has a longer, narrower bill, which Henryon said it used like a surgical tool to extract the seeds from the marri nuts it fed on, without destroying the whole nut.
BirdLife WA nominated the species for “uplisting” to critically endangered in 2023 under the state’s laws after research found the species’ population had declined by 90% in 40 years.
The proposal would have brought the state conservation status into line with international bodies such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which lists the Baudin’s as critically endangered.
But the state’s threatened species scientific committee rejected the nomination, citing insufficient data.
Conservationists now fear the species is under greater pressure than ever due to planned expansions of bauxite mining in WA’s northern jarrah forests.
The US aluminium giant Alcoa has two proposals to expand its bauxite mining operations that would clear more than 11,000 hectares of the heavily mined forest, roughly equivalent to bulldozing Perth’s Kings Park 27.5 times over.
Metals company South32 has also been given the green light from the state and federal governments to clear more than 3,800ha for the expansion of its Worsley Alumina bauxite mine.
Baudin’s black cockatoos rely on old trees and hollows in the northern jarrah forest in the Darling Range south-east of Perth as their primary winter habitat.
Most of the state’s Baudin’s population breeds in the state’s far south-west and migrates to forage in the northern jarrah forest between the months of March and September each year.
Mining companies in the area have a long history of what the Conservation Council of WA describes as “strip mining” – completely clearing parts of the forest in order to get to the bauxite underneath.
“I’ve seen images of football fields-worth of clearing, and there will be one tree left,” Matt Roberts, the council’s executive director, said.
Roberts said to secure the Baudin’s future, “we need to end mining in forests and [the] clearing of forests for mining”.
“These tree hollows can take hundreds of years to develop. They’re in very old trees. They can’t be rehabilitated or brought back at the pace that the Baudin’s needs them to be.”
The state’s Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) recently opened up Alcoa’s proposals for community consultation; the first time the public has had a chance to scrutinise the company’s operations in the area in 60 years.
It received more than 59,000 submissions – the highest number ever through a consultation process. Almost 90% were template responses, pre-written as part of an organised campaign, and the EPA said the record volume of responses highlighted the public’s interest in the assessment.
In its submission to the authority, BirdLife WA said the consequences of further mining in the global biodiversity hotspot would be “irreversible and catastrophic” for Western Australia’s birds, including the Baudin’s, the Carnaby’s and the forest red-tailed black cockatoo.
It told the authority the Baudin’s would become functionally extinct within 50 years or sooner if the expansions went ahead.
The organisation wrote that much of the clearing proposed was in the highest quality habitat, which included old, mature trees.
The EPA’s chair, Darren Walsh, said the authority would provide a summary of the submissions to Alcoa for a response before completing its assessment of the two proposals in the first half of next year. The authority would then deliver a report with its recommendations to the state’s environment minister, he said.
An Alcoa spokesperson said the company believed environmental factors should be “purposefully considered and responsibly managed in conjunction with development activities necessary to produce the aluminium required to meet growing global demand, largely driven by requirements for decarbonisation”.
“In both our current mining areas, and in future mining areas before the WA EPA – a proposal which involves clearing less than a 1 per cent additional area of the Northern Jarrah Forest over the next 20 years – we have avoidance measures in place to protect areas of high conservation value,” they said.
“Our environmental review documentation outlines the mitigation measures that Alcoa considers will ensure there are no significant impacts to threatened species including black cockatoos.”
The spokesperson said proposed mitigation measures included avoiding known and potential black cockatoo nesting trees and having buffer zones around them.
Henryon said Baudin’s were so familiar to Western Australians, “we almost take them for granted”.
“We have these birds flying around; they are part of the south-west’s identity. Are we happy for them to just fade away?” he said.
“If we want to protect them, we need to look after their homes. If we’re fair dinkum about this, we actually have to do something.”
