A joint project between the ACT government and the Australian National University (ANU) is asking Canberrans to mail gang-gang cockatoo feathers for critical research to save the endangered species.
Stacey Taylor, senior conservation planning officer at the ACT government, has received hundreds of feathers since putting the call out in August for people to send her gang-gang feathers.
The gang-gang has been in decline for the last few decades and was listed as endangered by the Australian government in March 2022.
"We know that their declines were exacerbated by the 2019 and 2020 bushfires. Around 30 per cent of their habitat was burned during those fires," Ms Taylor said.
The feather collection project, which receives funding from the Commonwealth government, is now looking at developing a strategic conservation monitoring program for birds.
An unknown icon
Despite the gang-gang gaining notoriety as a Canberra icon, and official faunal emblem, for its bright red feathers and distinct "squeaky gate" or "creaking door" call, not much is known about the species.
The ACT is known to be a hotspot for gang-gangs but Ms Taylor believes at most there are only about 150 left in the territory.
"What we've realised is how hard the species is to sample. We did some strategic monitoring across all of Canberra Nature Park and all of the urban areas where people see gang-gangs and we realised that there's actually a lot fewer of them than we had anticipated," she said.
This is largely due to "no systematic monitoring of the species" and reporting rates declining.
What we do know is that gang-gangs rely on hollows in trees, foraging areas and feed on over 200 species, all which are being impacted by climate change.
'Filling key knowledge gaps'
The feather collection project aims to collect DNA from gang-gangs, which is found on the quill of the feathers, in a non-intrusive way.
"They're just really hard to systematically sample. So looking at genetics is one way that we can look at the genetic variability of the species, population size, whether there is any genetic distinctions between populations across their entire range and by doing that we can look at the current viability of the species and then monitor the viability of the species through time," Ms Taylor said.
She believes "filling key knowledge gaps is a priority" and "we need to understand why the ACT is important".
"By understanding the key threats is obviously how we make informed decisions about what the next action should be in developing some way of monitoring them and genetics may be perhaps one of our best options," she said.
'Inundated with emails'
Ms Taylor said the response from Canberrans so far about the project has been "really awesome" and she has "been inundated with emails, and lots of people are really interested".
She has received hundreds of feathers in envelopes, but not all of them have been from gang-gang cockatoos.
"There are not many gang gang feathers around. There's lots of rosella feathers, and they're red too. But most of the gang-gang feathers - they're not red," she said.
She said you can identify a gang-gang feather from the colours, so most will be grey with flecks of orange, red or yellow or tinted with green.
"The number of feathers is completely dependent on how many individuals I get. Some people might come and give me like 20 from the same individual and maybe only need one," she said.
Ms Taylor is trying to get as many feathers as she can, "there's absolutely no limit".
Think you found a feather?
The gang-gang cockatoo feather identification handbook can be found here.
If you think you have found a gang-gang feather, avoid excessive handling of the quill.
If the feather is wet, air dry at room temperature before storing in an envelope.
Each feather should be placed in its own sealed envelope. However, if you find several feathers at the same location (that you believe to be from the same individual), they can be stored together.
On the outside of each envelope please carefully print the name of the collector, the location you collected the feather from (GPS coordinates are ideal) and the date of collection.
Please use gloves or be sure to wash your hands thoroughly after handling feathers.
To seek further information and to organise the collection or delivery of feathers, contact GangGangsACT@act.gov.au.
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