Allen Friis enlightens us on how the destruction of natural habitat is increasing the competition for nesting hollows.

From the tiny striated pardalote to the magnificent palm cockatoo, (probosciger aterrimus), finding suitable nest hollows is a priority come spring time. In many parts of Australia, land clearing has severely reduced the numbers of nesting hollows available to our varied wildlife.

Australia has a very poor record when it comes to land clearing and now ranks fifth in the world behind developing nations, Brazil, Indonesia, Sudan and Zambia. Research using accurate techniques of measuring vegetation loss has revealed that our land clearing rates are very high with 687,800 hectares of native vegetation being cleared every year. Reports by the Queensland Conservation Council, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Wilderness Society, state that over fifty football fields of vegetation are cleared every hour.

Read more in the magazine…