THE cost of climate change is ever increasing with yet another Australian native bird succumbing to the endangered species list.

Gang-gang cockatoos callocephalon fimbriatum, are mostly found in the cooler, wetter forests and woodlands of south-eastern Australia and in recent years have suffered a significant decline in numbers through land clearing and the bushfires of 2019 and 2020.

The extreme and unprecedented bushfires over that period across large parts of New South Wales and Victoria burnt 48 million acres of land, destroying precious hollow trees and important Gang-gang feeding habitat in their path.

Gang-gang cockatoos are popular due to their unique beauty and smoky grey colour, with a call that sounds like a squeaky door hinge, and the males are identifiable by their bright red heads and fluffy crests.

Bird Life Hamilton member and editor of the Golden Whistler newsletter, Samantha Greiner is a local participant of the ‘long term birds in plantations joint survey works’ with PF Olsen Australia and Bird Life Australia within the Green Triangle area - one of three areas to be surveyed.

Hardwood plantations can be important refuges for wildlife in fragmented landscapes and PF Olsen has partnered with Birdlife Australia and its network of volunteers to get a better understanding of the contributions that plantations make to birdlife biodiversity.

“My observation locally is that there is a stable population of Gang-gangs in the area … particularly in the Cobboboonee National Forest, the Heywood area and the Grampians National Park,” Ms Greiner said.

“They love blue gum plantations, a bit like koalas, who were recently listed as endangered in NSW, Queensland and ACT.

“And when the gums are harvested, Gang-gangs, like koalas, also have to move on.

“Environmental monitoring of native species is required in the plantations and although the population of the Gang-gang seems reasonably stable at the moment, like any native species, they can be vulnerable to extreme weather and other events at any time.”

Professor Sarah Legge from the Australian National University and Principal Research Fellow with the University of Queensland is a wildlife ecologist with 30 years of research and conservation management experience, with specific expertise in fire and feral animal management for conservation outcomes.

Professor Legge sat on the Threatened Species Scientific Committee and recommended that Gang-gangs be considered endangered.

“The 2019 and 2020 wildfires really brought this bird to the attention of the Threatened Species Scientific Committee,” she said.

“(But) we think that they were declining before the fires as the result of climate change-related factors and are quite sure the bird has declined possibly by as much as 69 per cent.

“The Gang-gang is listed as threatened across its entire range, which goes pretty much to the southwest Vic-SA border and includes The Grampians.

“It’s common, when species decline, for the declines to be most pronounced near the edges of a range.”

Gang-gangs are just one Australian species whose conservation status had to be reconsidered recently, with koalas listed as an “endangered species” last month.

The Federal Government upgraded koalas’ status from “vulnerable” after the bushfires precipitated their decline.

The iconic marsupials' population plummeted in those states in recent years and are now at serious risk of being wiped out, with caution and monitoring of numbers ongoing in other states, including Victoria.