The Paruku Rangers, established in 2004 to help manage the Paruku Indigenous Protected Area, are the custodians of a unique, little-known desert lake ecosystem located at the southernmost reaches of the Kimberley cattle country and the northern end of the Canning Stock Route. Used to being overlooked and under-serviced because of their remoteness, they were suddenly the centre of media attention, funding offers, and expert advice. The Night Parrot had been doing fine, flying under the radar for the four decades since its last sighting, but rare, elusive birds produce a strange fever in certain strata of the human population, and this low-flying, ground-dwelling, spinifex-nesting, seed-eating, dumpy, short-tailed, green bird, described by someone as ‘a fat budgie’, was the gold standard of mythical Australian birds.

The first decision the rangers made was to keep its location secret. This was not as mean-spirited as it sounds. While there are no doubt plenty of competent people in the bird-watching community, the nickname ‘twitcher’ doesn’t inspire confidence when associated with a remote desert region serviced only by an under-resourced ranger team.

But it was an opportunity to be grasped. If the whitefellas were interested in the Night Parrot, and prepared to chuck money at it, it was in the interests of the blackfellas to turn it to their advantage. If it took a fat budgie to achieve what youth suicide and intergenerational trauma had failed to do ...

This resulted in the gathering in June 2019 of a cross section of desert-ranger groups, bird scientists, politicians, and interested others at the Paruku Indigenous Protected Area campsite of Handover, so named because it was the place where native title was handed back to the Walmajarri traditional owners of Paruku in 2001. The road was graded, the campsite extended, a water bore drilled and cased, and caterers brought in to feed two hundred and fifty visitors for five days. Coordinated by the Indigenous Desert Alliance, the clumsily named Species of the Desert Festival brought together twenty-five Indigenous Ranger groups from across the Kimberley and the Central and Western desert regions, to share their knowledge and experience of desert ecology with Night Parrot experts and a collection of VIPs that included Senator Pat Dodson and the Guardian cartoonist First Dog on the Moon.

Steve Murphy holding the male Night Parrot freshly removed from the mist net on 6 May 2016 (photograph by Rachel Barr)

It is fortuitous that the desert Indigenous ranger groups occupy the same territory as the most charismatic of our threatened species (bilbies, marsupial moles, Night Parrots) and are best placed to find, monitor, and look after them. Not too long ago, the Indigenous rangers were at risk of becoming a threatened species themselves, when the then-minister for indigenous affairs decided that the ranger program should be relegated to the work-for-the-dole scheme from which it originated. This triggered an incredulous ‘what the fuck are you joking, this is one of the few initiatives that has produced real outcomes’ reaction from everyone who had spent decades working on Indigenous programs. The minister backed down and the no-longer-threatened Indigenous rangers are discovering that some of the threatened species they monitor may not be as threatened as was previously thought. The marsupial mole is turning up all over its natural habitat, burrowing about under the sand dunes. The same goes for the bilby. There are lots of bilbies in the desert, possibly because the Aboriginal inhabitants of the deep desert have long enjoyed eating the feral cats that prey on the bilbies.

Cats are the biggest threat to native birds, mammals, and reptiles. The most popular session of the Desert Festival was on managing feral animals, which included the latest development in feral-cat control, a sensor device that recognises the shape and proportions of a cat and releases a poison spray. Being a self-cleaning animal, the cat licks the poison off its fur and dies. There was a suggestion that the Night Parrot’s habit of making its nest deep inside a large clump of old-growth spinifex might be a recent development to escape from cats, but dingoes have been around for five thousand years longer than cats, so it’s more likely that the adaptation evolved to avoid dingoes, and possibly hawks, which are another efficient predator. On the other hand, maybe the hawks’ practice of picking up burning twigs from bushfires and dropping them into clumps of spinifex evolved to flush out Night Parrots.

Apart from the feral cat, the greatest predator of the Night Parrot was Frederick Andrews, employed as a collector by the South Australian Museum in the 1870s. He captured, killed, and preserved at least twenty-eight specimens for museums before drowning in a waterhole in 1884.

Based on the birds discovered so far, the Night Parrot habitat consists of widely spaced old-growth spinifex, which is not susceptible to wildfire, on run-off or flood-out country that produces samphire and quick-response, seed-bearing plants. One of the main agendas of the Species of the Desert Festival was to identify likely habitats and establish the groundwork for a Night Parrot recovery plan, with the initial input coming from Indigenous people, who could choose what information they wanted to share and how they wanted it used. For the first time, Indigenous knowledge would be the template on which to build the process.

Things got a bit heated when a young woman ranger challenged the Threatened Species Commissioner to explain why ranger teams had to look for Night Parrots in order to be funded to manage vast tracts of desert, and why the government couldn’t just give them the money. It was a fair question, but tough on the commissioner, the only politician apart from Pat Dodson who made the effort to attend.

The desert ecosystem doesn’t revolve around Night Parrots. They are an integral part of it, and if they turn out to be more populous than expected, it will be an indicator that leaving them alone is the best method of looking after them. However, if the whitefella obsession with a spectral avian species generates the money to get out on Country, observe its creatures, control the impact of feral animals and weeds, support traditional management practices, and contribute to the shared endeavour to maintain its environmental and cultural integrity, it’s up to the Indigenous ranger teams to grab the opportunity and make the most of it. Which is what happened, in spite of some ironic observations about a fat nocturnal budgie that supposedly bumps into trees when flying.

No doubt there are negotiations going on between the bird scientists and the traditional owners of the places where Night Parrots are known, or thought, to be. Access to the parrot and its habitat must be a priority for the people who have invested so much in studying it. But for the time being it’s up to the Indigenous ranger teams to decide where to look and what to reveal.