Cockies for Cockies
Protecting our remnant vegetation and infilling with cockatoo food.
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​Period: 2024 - 2027 
Funding Body: WICC and State Natural Resource Management
Project Officers: Kylie Cook, Nat Wallen and Tim Gamblin

Community for Cockies

Black cockatoos in Southwestern WA will be extinct in our lifetime without landscape scale intervention. Using the best available science and scientists, this program will preserve remnant vegetation, revegetate with cockatoo foraging flora and strategically place nesting boxes to provide critical habitat on farms in the Wilson, Owingup and Kent catchment areas. We will also be building the capacity of the next generation of cockatoo custodians by carrying out cockatoo conservation programs and establishing cockatoo sanctuaries in our local primary schools.
Numerous factors have lead to their decline, however habitat loss has had the biggest impact. Land clearing and loss of foraging has caused black cockatoo numbers to decline significantly.
Farmers (aka “Cockies”) in our region have the capacity to reverse this decline. There has been an overwhelming response to our expression of intererest circulated before drafting this application.

Every farm has suitable water sources (dams, soaks and troughs) for cockatoos. Black Cockatoos would benefit greatly from supplementary foraging and in some instances a ‘cockatoo house’ (nesting box) to improve the chances of nesting success . By protecting and improving on-farm remnant vegetation with cockatoo foraging flora and strategically placing nesting boxes we can make a difference.
We will partner with WA’s key authorities in cockatoo conservation to carry out a first class cockatoo conservation program. This program will focus on immediate and long term actions to ensure we deliver lasting results:

Immediate Actions:
• Identify roosts,
• Idenitfy priority locations for revegetation.
• Install nesting boxes,
• Collect seed with Aboriginal Rangers,
• Community revegetation and protect remnant vegetation, • Educational campaign addressing threats, and
• Monitor effectiveness.
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Long Term:
• Education program in local schools with renowned ornithologist, Simon Cherriman.
​• Seed collection (cockatoo foraging plants) – WICC Revegetation Officer, students
• Students propagate and plant cockatoo foraging sites
• Students observe nesting box installation (which they helped to build)

LotteryWest is a supporter of this program