Thought the following story featured in today's ABC news will interest
many!
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Last Update: Friday, January 7, 2005. 11:30am (AEDT)
Fears held for rare WA birds
The Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) says a fire in
the Mt Manypeaks Nature Reserve in southern Western Australia and the
subsequent burning program to contain it has had a significant impact on
the area's rare birds.
Mt Manypeaks is home to a number of threatened species, including the
semi-flightless noisy scrub bird.
The fire was first noticed on Friday and contained over the weekend, but
threatened to flare again earlier this week.
CALM undertook an aerial burning program on Tuesday and Wednesday to
suppress the fire, with about 4,000 hectares of the reserve burnt out.
CALM's Alan Danks says it will be impossible to tell how many birds were
affected until it can do an accurate count in winter.
"Make no mistake, we're not trying to kid ourselves, lots of scrub birds
would have perished in this fire, but there will be some survivors and
the populations of the scrub birds on Mt Gardiner of course and Bald
Island that we've set up through translocation work will still survive
and they'll be the ones that will carry the species forward," he said.
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