The Mallee Bird Community
The Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board is contributing to the recovery of threatened mallee birds by focussing on the recovery of the mallee bird community.
What is the Mallee Bird Community?
The mallee bird community is short for the Mallee Bird Community of the Murray Darling Depression Bioregion. It is a threatened ecological community identified in the Australian Government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act). In 2021, the mallee bird community was identified as Endangered.
The mallee bird community is an assemblage of 20 bird species that rely on mallee habitats within the Murray Darling Depression Bioregion for their continued persistence. Ten of these species are individually threatened in South Australia (*) and six of these species are individually threatened in Australia (^).
Why is the Mallee Bird Community Endangered?
The mallee bird community has been impacted primarily by large-scale historic clearing of mallee habitats, which has reduced the extent of mallee habitats and fragmented what remained into mostly small, isolated blocks that are susceptible to habitat degradation. Presently, the mallee bird community is impacted by
- small-scale habitat clearing and fragmenting;
- habitat degradation due to high grazing pressure by captive, feral and native herbivores, invasive weeds, and unnatural fire regimes; and
- direct threats like, feral predators, extreme weather events, and climate change.
What are we doing for the Mallee Bird Community?
The Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board is working with partners throughout the Murray Darling Depression Bioregion to conserve and enhance the mallee bird community. Our project Call of the Mallee aims to:
- improve the condition of the mallee bird community at the landscape scale
- build resilience in the mallee bird community to climate change and extreme weather events
- build participation and leadership in First Nations people to manage and recover the mallee bird community
The following are some of the activities we are doing:
- monitoring malleefowl mounds for breeding activity and feral predator numbers
- directly reducing goat, deer and rabbit populations
- closing pastoral dams on reserves to reduce total gazing pressure and restore natural hydrology
- restore native vegetation on closed dams to rebuild natural refugia
- controlled burns to re-establish healthy mallee habitat and protect critical mallee habitat for threatened species and the threatened ecological community
- monitoring the mallee bird community throughout the region and national and state listed threatened species in core areas
- investigating possible novel threats, like dieback caused by mallee looper moths
- including and sharing knowledge with First Nation communities and ranger groups
- championing the conservation and restoration of the Mallee Bird Community
Lead agency
Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board
Project partners
Department of Environment and Water, National Parks and Wildlife Service, Australian Landscape Trust, Gluepot Reserve (Birdlife Australia), River Murray and Mallee Aboriginal Corporation, Ngarrindjeri Aboriginal Corporation, National Malleefowl Recovery Group, Trees for Life, and RLB Ecology.
Funding partner
The Australian Government through the Panel of Regional Delivery Partners framework.
Bulldozers for conservation
Image gallery
More information
Murraylands and Riverland Landscape Board
Unit 5-6, Level 1 Sturt Centre, 2 Sturt Reserve Road, Murray Bridge SA 5253
08 8532 9100