There are renewed hopes for the future of an endangered bird on Kangaroo Island, after hatchlings have been discovered.
Natural Resources Kangaroo Island discovered 23 glossy black cockatoo chicks on the island, some in areas heavily hit by bushfires.
Most of the island was affected by bushfires, including Flinders Chase National Park, in January.
Darren Glover from WWF Australia said the hatchings were great news.
"We're hopeful that the parents of these birds can find enough food to sustain these chicks and hopefully we'll see them fledging and leaving the nest sometime in the future," he said.
He said work was underway to protect the chicks from predators such as possums.
"Around about a metre, metre and a half of corrugated iron is attached around the base of the trunk of the tree and the possums can't get past it, they can't get a grip on that," he said.
"So, it means that cockatoos and all the other birds who want to nest in that tree are safe to do so."
Wildlife feeding winding down
The RSPCA has been running a wildlife feeding program on the island since the bushfires, in an effort to keep native animals fed.
Carolyn Jones from RSPCA South Australia said, in normal situations, it was best to not feed native animals.
"The situation on Kangaroo Island was a bit different to other areas," she said.
"Being an island, there was nowhere for this wildlife to migrate to find habitat once their habitat had been destroyed.
"It wasn't like animals on the mainland that could have moved to another region."
Good rainfall on the island had led to native feed stocks being replenished and the RSPCA now expected to end the feeding program by July.
"The last thing that we wanted is for our feeding program to cause dependency because that's not good for the animals at all," Ms Jones said.
"The sooner that we're able to deactivate our feeding stations the better.
"We're doing this very carefully, based on an assessment of the different regions."
