Help Museums Victoria find the
Endemic to south-eastern Australia, Gang-gang cockatoos (Callocephalon fimbriatum) are an iconic and recognisable bird. With their characteristic “squeaky door” call, it’s hard not to notice when they are around.
Over the last 35 years, nearly 70% of the population has been lost. The Black Summer fires in 2019-2020 impacted populations further, with nearly 30% of their habitat burnt and a further 10% decline in their population size.
Continued threats to their survival include nest hollow competition, nest predation, habitat loss and degradation, and continued unpredictable bushfires.
In partnership with The University of Melbourne and the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action through the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, Museums Victoria has collected acoustic data across much of the Victorian range of Gang-gang cockatoos to look at the relationship between the presence of Gang-gang cockatoos and bushfire.
Research Objectives
This project will help us to understand how bushfires shape the distribution and movement of Gang-gang cockatoos in Victoria. You can help us by identifying Gang-gang Cockatoo calls so we can know where and when they were present.
We will also be using this data to improve artificial intelligence training datasets that can help us sift through hours of acoustic recordings and answer ecological questions about the Gang-gangs (and potentially other species) all over the state. The detections from this project will also contribute to the museum and other public repositories of data, so that other people can use our data in their projects and in the future.
Example Calls
Gang-gang Cockatoo
Gang-gang Cockatoo
Meet the Team
Dr. Karen Rowe
Karen is the Senior Curator of Birds at Museums Victoria. Her research focuses on developing acoustic survey and monitoring methods to better understand the distributional dynamics of birds over space and time.
Dr. Marina D. A. Scarpelli
Dr. Marina D. A. Scarpelli is a post-doctoral Fellow at the Museums Victoria. Her research interests revolve around using data (mainly acoustics) to better understand biodiversity patterns over different spatial and temporal scales.
Liam Meredith
Liam Meredith is an Ornithologist at Museums Victoria. His research interests focus on the interactions between fire, vegetation and bird community patterns. He is currently undertaking an Honours research project at the University of Melbourne exploring these patterns in the Grampians/ Gariwerd National Park in western Victoria.
Open Ecoacoustics is supported through a co-investment partnership with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) (DOI: 10.3565/ts8c-ee10) through the Planet Research Data Commons. The ARDC is enabled by the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
