You probably haven’t heard of the orange-bellied parrot but then there are only 50 breeding pairs in the world and they’re only to be found in Tasmania in the summer and then across the other side of the Bass Strait in Victoria and South Australia in the winter. Despite not really having much orange on their bellies, these parrots have come into the money, $3.2m to be precise, or $32,000 per parrot.They're deemed to be an endangered species on a par with the Siberian Tiger and the Giant Panda. So the Federal Government has stepped in.
This is clearly a parrot with punch. Recently a plan to build a $220m wind farm on the Victoria coast was scrapped because it lay on the migration route. Even though it was calculated that approximately one parrot in several decades would be minced by the blades, that was clearly one parrot too many for the Government.
So now the parrots will be not only be relieved from having to negotiate whirling turbine blades but they’ll also have millions spent on improving their habitat and, because this is Australia, the country where cats are kept in at night and encouraged to wear bells so they can’t creep silently up on their prey, there will also be slaughter of feral cats.
I’m comforted by the fact that while Siberia has a huge, ravening carnivore in need of care, Australia has a small, but well-travelled, parrot with a bit of orange on its tummy. It makes up for all the poisonous stuff, I suppose
