Breeding pairs of Carnaby's black cockatoos have almost tripled in an area of West Australian bushland thanks in part to dozens of artificial nesting hollows, which one researcher has described as like a "cockatoo Club Med".
Rick Dawson, who has been studying the threatened species at the site east of Jurien for 17 years, said the work has gone ahead with the blessing of local farmers for decades.
"We have got four farmers in a row here who go out of their way to help us who have been supporting us for 51 years," Mr Dawson said.
He said work to help the Carnaby's involved repairing degraded natural hollows and installing artificial hollows.
'Cockatoo Club Med'
"If you put an artificial hollow in their actual breeding ground they work really well," he said.
"Basically, this place is cockatoo Club Med.
"If you just chuck them anywhere, they do not work."
Mr Dawson and volunteers check the birds' nests and weigh, measure and take DNA samples from nestlings.
They are then banded and monitored.
Peter Mawson, the Perth Zoo science program leader within the Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions, has also been coming to the properties for 17 years and every year since 2009.
"When we first started monitoring seriously, we were only 40 or 50 breeding pairs reliably located. Now we are up to 128," Dr Mawson said.
"There are a lot of threatened species that are very difficult to find out what exactly you can do to make a significant different to their conservation status.
"And for something as simple and relatively easy to achieve artificial hollows work well in an existing breeding site."
Artificial nests replicate natural hollows
The hollows are 1.2 metres deep and attached to trees, about four metres off the ground.
"We have made these artificial hollows exactly like what the most successful natural hollows are," Mr Dawson said.
"We know that [natural] hollows are limiting.
"Sometimes they fall all the way through, they can have holes in the side."
He said the birds' impact on farming is 'negligible'.
"Everyone seems to love black cockatoos," he said.
"I think we are lucky to have them and it would be tragic if we did not have them in the future."
