Taylor Swift can pack stadiums but can she save a species?
ACT Senator David Pocock hopes so and wants the megastar to use her vast influence to help pluck the world’s fastest parrot from the jaws of extinction.
Australia’s critically endangered swift parrots are the original swifties – the nickname for Tay Tay’s enormous legion of fans.
Scientists believe there could be as few as 750 mature birds left, with projections that could shrink to under 100 within the next six years.
Yet logging continues in the native forests they depend on for survival, including their only breeding grounds in the mature forests of Tasmania.
Senator Pocock has designed T-shirts that meld photos of the bird with a poster from Swift’s Eras Tour, which hits Sydney on Friday night.
Sale proceeds are going to a bird research group but the senator hopes the star and her fans will highlight the parrot’s precarious situation while she’s in Australia.
“We’ve seen the plight of the incredible swift parrot get the attention of Leonardo DiCaprio recently,” he says.
“Given the ridiculously slow and completely inadequate response from Australian governments to save this iconic species, a Taylor Swift intervention might be their best hope of not going extinct.”
Earlier this month, DiCaprio told millions of Instagram followers Australia must end native forest logging.
“The Australian government has promised that it will prevent any new extinctions. Conservationists continue to encourage them to uphold their zero extinction commitment,” the screen star wrote.
Scientists who study the species say it simply won’t recover without an end to government-sanctioned logging in Tasmania and along the east coast.
An updated national recovery plan for the parrot, which has been clocked at close to 90km/h, has been in draft stage for years.
But scientists on the Swift Parrot Recovery Team who had input into the draft say it does not adequately acknowledge the logging threat, nor will it bring habitat destruction to an end.
“This plan absolutely will not save the swift parrot from extinction,” says team member Dr Dejan Stojanovic, from the Australian National University.
Until state and federal politicians bite the bullet on logging in native forests the swift parrot will continue to dwindle before vanishing, he warns.
Alice Hardinge, from the Wilderness Society Tasmania, says there’s no quick way to replace the mature, hollow-bearing trees the parrots need to breed.
“It would take hundreds of years to even begin to restore what has been lost. Hollow bearing trees are crucial to the survival of many special species, and suitable hollows can take centuries to develop,” she says.
“There is no more time to waste, the Tasmanian government and Albanese government must step up.”
