SOS OBP

I’ve fallen in love with a media star. And here’s what I’ve learnt: front-page fame won’t necessarily save you from extinction.

My love-object first hit the headlines a couple of decades ago when former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett dismissed it as a ‘trumped up corella’. The orange-bellied parrot (its real name) was getting in the way of Kennett’s plan to move a chemical storage facility to Point Lillias, near Geelong. The ‘OBP’ was endangered and Point Lillias was one of the places the remaining parrots came to feed.

In spite of the best efforts of scientists and bird-lovers, things have gone from bad to worse for this winsome bird. Orange-bellied parrots are now critically endangered. There are a few hundred in captivity but only about twenty adult OBP’s in the wild.

Why should you care if this gentle bird is consigned to oblivion? Unless you join the posse of biologists and volunteers trying to keep these parrots alive, you may never see one in the wild.

In spite of my click-baity opening line, this is not a story about celebrity. It’s about loss.

Ageing, I have realized, involves a long, hard coming-to-terms with losing things. We will all lose our grandparents, then our parents. Many of us will lose our children, or the possibility of having any. We may lose jobs we’ve valued, friendships we’ve treasured, hopes we’ve harboured.

Our bodies will lose their strength. Our minds will lose memories we thought would last forever. These losses are inevitable and they can be crushing.

The people working to save the OBPs have given individual names to all the remaining wild birds. When a species is as close to extinction as this one is, each death is deeply felt. 

But losing the last little parrot with a blue-striped brow and an amber belly is not inevitable. It is preventable. With enough money and political will, the OBPs could be dragged back from the brink. Their beauty, their ingenuity, their mysterious navigational powers - these things are worth preserving.

Try this: search online for that famous footage of the last Tasmanian tiger. Watch it pacing in its cage, and remember that this astonishing creature is gone for good.

Now search for images of orange-bellied parrots. Watch them feeding, flirting, flying. Fall for that rainbow undercarriage, that graceful blur of luminescence.

It’s not too late.

This column was first published in The Age/SMH in 2018.