Will You Help Save A Black Cockatoo, Today?
Be involved in saving your cockatoos
Support a project in your back yard!
Our Black Cockatoos are seriously threatened by the consistent clearing of their habitat and the ever depleting groundwater resources on the Swan Coastal Plain.
The Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Rescue Centre are raising funds for Black Cockatoo conservation through a project which will distribute DVDs to schools and P&C Associations in Perth.
Education is the key!
By donating, you will be supporting current and future education opportunities for our children about Black Cockatoos and their lives.
You will be supporting Kaarakin in its mission to ‘protect, rehabilitate and release endangered species of Australian wildlife’.
Every donation no matter how small is valuable to this project!
You can make your donation right now, with PayPal. Please do it now!
Donations of all amounts are very welcome!
“On a Wing and a Prayer” follows the incredible life cycle of the Carnaby’s cockatoo through the engaging story of one small cockatoo family. Capturing a remarkable “never filmed before” journey of life and hope for one of Australia’s most loved, but critically, endangered birds.
Recently screened Australia-wide on the ABC , this inspiring and educational film received rave reviews and will shortly be available on DVD as a fundraising project for Kaarakin.
This project will raise funds to support the ongoing work of Kaarakin, in its mission to protect, rehabilitate and release endangered species of Australian wildlife – including our Black Cockatoos
Kaarakin Fundraising Project Overview
Kaarakin Fundraising Project Overview
We are about to roll out our fund raising campaign to 5,000 schools across Australia and this is an overview of the whole project. Please click on the link to open the report as a PDF:
Beginning in mid August 2012, in conjunction with Our Online Canteen, an advertising campaign will be delivered in print and online to 5,000 schools and P&C associations across Australia – working through the canteen facilities of each school.
Each school will receive a high quality printed booklet, promoting the services of Our Online Canteen, which is already well accepted in five states of Australia. The booklet will also include a full page promotion for Stories My Nana Tells
With each booklet will be a professionally designed promotional flyer for the Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Rescue Centre and delivery envelopes will be overprinted with a cockatoo motif – to draw attention to the flyer.
Each booklet with carry a small, coloured promotion within its pages for the project and Stories My Nana Tells will offer a cash incentive to P&C Associations whose members become subscribers to their service.
The project is well designed and thought through and we expect it to be a great success.
Will YOU Help A Black Cockatoo?
If YOU want to help, please do!
Donations of all amounts are very welcome, to help launch this project. You will be very welcome as a Kaarakin Hero!
If you want to support Kaarakin’s project and pay through EFT transfer or by cheque, Email Us Here
Share Your Thoughts With Us.
If you share your blog posts on Social Media platforms, the comments on the link from your blog are just as valid as those left on the blog post itself. We are very happy for comments and shares to be done through our Facebook page or by RT on Twitter at @nanastories
Grandparents need good stuff for children online to share with their family, especially for kid’s birthdays. School teachers and parents who supervise homework or home school are always looking for stories for kids and good websites for children. They use Facebook and Twitter as well as search engines, like Google and Yahoo, to source reliable and engaging education material for online reading from websites for children as well as for use in their school’s classes.
Stories My Nana Tells is such a family website – with free stories, good links and premium high quality stories for members.
If you find good links to share, please do it! If you like our stories, please share us with your family and friends. We would love to hear from you, too. We love comments and we love to share!
Are Your Hazard Lights Flashing?
Are Your Hazard Lights Flashing?
Many of our black cockatoos come to grief on the side of the roads, feeding and drinking. Because they are such a big bird, they face into and take off into the wind – which sometimes means they fly into traffic instead of away from it.
Let’s have a campaign of warning other drivers that the birds are there and get them to slow down as they go by. If you see the cockies on the side of the road ahead of you, put your warning flashing lights on. As you approach the group of birds, slow down a little. This will alert drivers ahead and behind who are approaching the group of birds to be mindful of them and take care to watch out for them flying off.
One Black Cockatoo carer wrote this on her Facebook page:
Crap, this is what I hate…well meaning rescuer keeps a black cocky for over a week after it is hit by a car “It had a bad head wound but its come good, I think its better that you release it. It’s been in a small cage but I think it can fly, it flutters about when other birds come near it”.
F#*K…in what state will this bird come to me in tomorrow morning? In person will she listen to me when I say the best chance a bird has at survival depends not only on severity of injury, but also on how quickly it comes to a qualified carer who can get it to the zoo?
Please let this be a healthy bird, minor injuries that the zoo find have healed correctly, meaning release, not over a week old fractures that are now infected and already healing incorrectly with internal bleeding and a suffering Black Cockatoo :’( I just can’t cope with more of that….and having to deal with a well meaning person who has prolonged the suffering of an animal.”
What Kaarakin has found in the past, is that people hang onto the birds until they think that it’s about to die. Then panic! Call the cockatoo rescue people who drop everything to go and pick it up and run it to the zoo, just for it to be euthanized. They did a trip out to Gidgegannup just like that, the woman had held onto this poor bird for about a week. She was also very hazy about where it had been found (which makes them suspicious). 3 hour round trip for a poor bird that ended up being euthanized. God knows how much pain and stress that bird had gone through in the meantime. She had it in a cage, uncovered, out near the front of the house, by the drive.
(c) Leighton De Barros
Not all the stories are sad – many have very happy endings. Recently NINE Carnaby’s black cockatoos that had passed through Louise Hopper’s loving hands on their way through rehabilitation at Kaarakin and are about to fly free, we say “Good luck, it’s been an absolute pleasure.
To the bonded couple….we hope you find a nest hollow suitable for you and your future chick.To all the Kaarakin volunteers…be proud and enjoy the moment!”
Red Helicopter Heroes Rescue Black Cockatoos
MEDIA RELEASE
June 07, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Red Helicopter Flies To Rescue Black Cockatoos
An Australian-first website for families with kids has launched a major project to raise funds of $40,000 in support of the Perth based Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Rescue Centre and to help spread the story of Carnaby’s Cockatoos to children and teachers through 2,000 schools
- at Stories My Nana Tells
The site is the ultimate resource for parents who want to share unique and engaging stories with their children, encourage them to read and help overcome the anxiety of separation.
Children’s author and creator of the website, Lesley Dewar, said the recent launch of the film “On A Wing And A Prayer” had created a highly positive opportunity for parents, schools and P&C groups to join together and use the film for [Read more...]
One Hundred Heroes
Living in the hills in Stoneville for many years, our iconic red tailed black cockatoos kept me company on many a lazy afternoon while the Eagles battled on the football field or the Carnaby’s white tails sent my Dad running as they showered him with “honkey nuts”. We watched them raise their babies; tease Burt, our pink and grey galah and as a kitten, Splinter was fearless in confronting them in the branches of the banksia.
Marri trees covered with their intense white blossoms gave us “summer snow” every autumn; when March flies appear from nowhere to feast on the nectar and us, and a short time later uncountable tonnes of white stamens drift down to fill the kerbs to overflowing. Driving along Stoneville Road towards to Mundaring, for all those years, I knew little of the critical future now faced by our white and red tailed black cockatoos.
For the past six months, through meetings and public protests; Facebook, blog posts at Stories My Nana Tells and other social media sites, a lot of friends and I have been engaged in a campaign to bring their plight to the attention of [Read more...]
Torching Our Forests or Managing The Fire Risks?
As regular readers of this blog will know, Lesley Dewar is helping to campaign for conservation and protection of both our high value conservation forests and their unique native inhabitants. She is passionate about helping to raise awareness of conservation issues.
This post has on purpose: to provide links to a variety of points of view and people whose opinions are highly divergent. It is easy:
- to shout down those whose views do not agree with yours;
- to deride academics or activists as ” armchair critics” when they may not have had intense physical interaction with bushfires;
- to ignore the right of everyone to express their point of view;
- to fail to support the views of others who have a credible story to tell
- to deny evidence because you do not approve or like or accept by whom it is presented;
Readers are invited to read, review and comment. The notes in italics have been added by the author or sourced as a quote from the link. The links to the You Tube videos have not been edited for the sake of appearance.
Don’t Torch The Tingles.
Uploaded to You Tube by WAforests on May 17, 2011
The last of our pre European Tingle Forest is to be firebombed next summer 2011/2012. This is the last large example of long unburnt OPEN FLOOR Tingle Forest left in the world, solely due to it being without fire for 80 years, allowing the understory to collapse and decompose creating this Park Land Forest with declining litter or fuel levels.
At the date of uploading, we had not been able to confirm whether the proposed burning had been carried out. The video offers suggestions on alternative areas to be selected for the proposed burning which may be more effective than the initially selected site.
Wildfire WA part 1 (Waterbush)
Uploaded to You Tube by WAforests on May 25, 2011
Controlled forest burning in Western Australia is making the forest more flammable and therefore more dangerous.
A very interesting video on the proliferation of vegetation which seeds well after burning.
Wildfire WA part 2 (Waterbush)
Uploaded to You Tube by WAforests on Jun 5, 2011
The WA government, under Colin Barnett, is encouraging the destruction of native forest animals by destroying their habitat.
The second video in the series, it offers alternative ideas on proposed burning actions.
Water Flower (Florabase Dept Environment and Conservation)
South West Western Australia on a budget
Uploaded to You Tube by RadioLynxContent on Dec 2, 2011
One of the worries about taking a holiday of a lifetime is that it is going to cost you the earth, but in south west Western Australia that needn’t be the case.
With strong calls by the author for more attention to eco-tourism, videos like this help promote the South West as a good tourism destination.
Bush Fire Front: The Alliance Against Bushfire Damage in WA
The Bush Fire Front is a Western Australian voluntary organisation dedicated to protecting householders, farmers and forests from the ravages of bushfires. Our focus is the southwest corner of WA, where hundreds of thousands of people, valuable property, public assets and priceless forests are threatened by wildfire.
We are practical bushfire specialists, with hundreds of years’ accumulated experience in preventing bushfire damage to people, property and forests. We are a group of West Australians deeply concerned to prevent bushfire damage to people, lives and forests. Each of us has worked in bushfire prevention, bushfire science, fire planning, administration or operations for over 35 years
http://bushfirefront.com.au/opinion/general-fire-management-issues
Quote: We need a return to the sort of fire management regime used by aboriginal people in ages past. The beautiful forests and landscapes that the first European settlers found were the product of frequent mild burning, not of massive high intensity fires which blackened the landscape over millions of hectares, which is what the current approach is doing.
South West Fire Services
South West Fire Services is a Busselton based Fire Management Consultancy. Established in 2001, we specialise in management of fire in the natural environment, with emphasis on protection of the biodiversity values, property, and life. With a combined total of over 100 years in practical fire management, we can offer practical advice based on extensive fire and land management experience
John Evans is the director of SWFS, with nearly 40 years experience with DEC in District and Regional Fire Management roles throughout the SW. Primary responsibilities included planning and managing fire management programmes, wildfire suppression operations (Level 3 Incident Controller), fire training, preparation of technical and reference material, liaising with state and local government agencies, and forest management companies etc. Specialising in Karri, Tingle and Jarrah forest fire management, but with a wide range of experience across WA, he is based in Busselton.
http://www.bushfireservices.com.au/about-us/john-evans/
DEC: Science Division Research Project:
The impact of wildfire in old growth forest of the Walpole-Nornalup National Park on short-range endemic invertebrates and their forest floor communities
This study, established in December 2001, was designed to involve and educate the local volunteers in the establishment of a long-term invertebrate collection
Profile link for Paul Van Heurck http://science.dec.wa.gov.au/people/?sid=117#profile
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Arthropods, beetle fire ecology, beta richness, Bushfire CRC, Coleoptera biodiversity, fire mosaics, ForestCheck beetles, rarefaction, structural diversity, trophic guilds, Walpole beetles, Walpole protocol, wildfire impacts
At the date of posting, the author had not been able to contact Paul Van Heurck and has not yet accessed any information on the results of the study.
Interview With Ben (age 10) About Saving Forests
Today, we had an interview with Ben, aged 10, a school boy in New South Wales who is doing a project on rain forests and the need for conservation. Ben sent me his questions by email and we hooked up with Skype, so he could record the interview.
I would like to share his questions and my answers with you – along with some of the photographs I sent to him by email for his project. The questions were all set by Ben and I simply answered them as I saw fit. His mother was present during the interview and was very pleased with the information Ben received.
1) How can we best preserve our rainforests?
It is very important that we understand the depth of their bio-diversity and that habitat is not just trees. Many people overlook little things about habitat: it is the fallen leaf litter and the decaying logs in which the lizards and the beetles live, as much as the beautiful butterflies in the tree tops.
I have been to Cairns in Northern Queensland and to Sabah in Borneo, to visit rainforests and to try and understand how we can ignore their value as part of our environmental health. [Read more...]
Where Have All My Spiders Gone?
After a short visit to the US, (to attend a financial planning conference) I flew to Canada to visit my two sons and the young ladies who became their wives. By then, all four of them had temporarily stopped roaming around the world and were living in Toronto. In the early hours of an 1994 Easter holiday morning, while a snowy blizzard howled outside, those words spilled easily from my heart and soul to write a poem and a story for my second son.
Pointed, painted Christmas stars,
flags of white marking off their boundaries.
Red-legged bellies span my early morning walk
with webs to catch my steaming breath. [Read more...]
This Is Why Our #BlackCockatoos Are Starving!
The Hon. Colin Barnett, MEc, MLA,
Premier, Minister for State Development,
Government of Western Australia.
Dear Premier Barnett
Undoubtedly, you are aware of the critical state of our iconic black cockatoos and the loss of 100,000 hectares of bushland due to fires in the South West this summer. Today, logging has started in Warrup Forest near Bridgetown. This is a critical refuge for black cockatoos, numbats and so many other creatures; one of the few remaining areas where black cockatoos can feed on a natural diet.
The Hon. Bill Marmion, BE, MBA, MLA, Minister for Environment; Water is not available for meetings until February 16, 2012, to discuss placing any kind of ban on [Read more...]