Rosie Galea chuckles as she describes the call of the bush stone-curlew (Burhinus grallarius). “I’ve heard that people often think it’s a woman screaming,” she says. “The sound is certainly unique and distinctive, but it’s very much how the Victorian landscape should sound when dusk falls.”
Rosie and her partner Mark Reed are members of the Upper Spring Creek Landcare Group in central Victoria. At their home in Lockwood, about 130km from Melbourne, they’ve built four enclosures on their 26ha property in an effort to save the bush stone-curlew from extinction in Victoria, where it’s been listed as critically endangered since 2023. “When we moved here 20 years ago, we saw our first ever pair of curlews from the kitchen window,” Rosie recalls. “Every winter for the next four years they’d return to the same spot. After the fourth year we never saw them again.”
In March 2020 Rosie and Mark jumped at the opportunity to carry on a local curlew captive breeding and release program. “The project actually started 14 years ago with the Save Our Curlews project, led by Judy Crocker of the Upper Spring Creek Landcare Group,” Rosie says. Judy passed away in December. “It was her vision and drive that allowed us to carry on the work.”
At Rosie and Mark’s home, a curlew’s high-pitched wail is one voice in a chorus of 16 individuals all living inside the property’s enclosures. Their calls persist all night from the moment dusk hits, mingling with the sounds of cicadas and other nocturnal animals. It’s a wonder Rosie and Mark get any sleep.
Most of these curlews will be moved to Mt Rothwell Biodiversity Interpretation Centre, about 50km west of Melbourne, to await future translocation. It’s part of a larger initiative to return the species to places it once inhabited across the south-east of Australia.
“When I think about the wild curlews we used to see here that disappeared, it’s as if with that last visit they were asking for our help. Perhaps it was our destiny to do so,” Rosie says. “We do the work because my heart and my head tell us we should. All we ask is to see more action for the curlew and the plight of the Australian environment in general. Otherwise, the curlew’s call may never return to the Victorian landscape – and that is truly heartbreaking.”
Species decline
The bush stone-curlew is a quirky and charismatic bird. From the front it looks like a caricature, with bulbous yellow eyes jutting cartoonishly out the side of its head. It has a round body and long skinny legs punctuated by knobbly knees. Its call is haunting, unlike anything you’ve heard before.
Before the decline of Victoria’s bush stone-curlew populations, flocks of 50 to 100 birds could be seen in the state. Today, it’s rare to see more than four pairs at a time. The culprits for their decline are habitat clearing and fragmentation (85 per cent of Victoria’s curlew habitat has been lost), and introduced predators such as the European fox – which is absent from Far North Queensland, where the curlew remains common. This is the case for several bird species in Australia – such as the brolga, Australian bustard and magpie goose – that are common up north but endangered down south. Evolution has gifted the curlew incredible camouflage to evade predators (usually birds of prey) by allowing them to blend in when they lie still in grassy woodlands. But these skills are no match for introduced cats and foxes.
Now, researchers at the Coexistence Conservation Laboratory are looking at innovative ways to tackle the long-standing issue of native species decline by introduced predators. Led by Professor Adrian Manning from the Australian National University’s (ANU) Fenner School of Environment & Society, the lab is studying ways native species might be able to adapt and survive in the presence of invasive predators. It includes research on modifying the behaviours of both the predator and the prey so they can coexist. For example, a fox could potentially be ‘trained’ to develop taste aversion to curlew eggs by eating a poisoned mock curlew egg, which would not kill the fox but make it avoid eating any in the future.
A recipe for reintroduction
Shoshana Rapley is a PhD candidate from ANU whose research is helping to improve the success of reintroduced bush stone-curlew populations across Australia’s south-east. For her PhD field work, Shoshana studied a population of curlews that were fitted with ‘GPS backpacks’ and released onto Orana Park Sanctuary, a fenced conservation reserve about 50km north of Bendigo in Victoria. The backpacks provided daily data about where the curlews roamed and how far they travelled.
“My PhD is looking at the reintroduction biology of the curlew,” Shoshana says. “We want to be able to put together a recipe of translocation tactics that will help the reintroduced curlews survive and thrive after release.”
Coupled with the Coexistence Conservation Laboratory’s research, this work might bring about a world where foxes and bush stone-curlews coexist in the wild without local extinctions. Importantly, the laboratory sees this work as complementary to current conservation and feral animal control measures – not as a replacement.
But modifying behaviour requires good genes. The Odonata Foundation, a not-for-profit conservation organisation, has been actively involved in breeding and releasing curlews since 2019. The foundation is collaborating with researchers from Cesar Australia, an independent research and extension company, to broaden the genetic diversity of curlews in its breeding program by sourcing individuals from interstate populations.
“The genetic rescue of the Victorian population of curlews will be crucial to their survival,” says Dale Crisp, biodiversity project coordinator at Odonata. “Our focus is on introducing new genetics into our captive population to broaden the gene pool and make the birds more resilient to disease and more likely to survive and adapt to climate change. Perhaps one day we may even see the curlew resort to more of a flight response rather than the current freeze/lie-down approach to threats…The genetics of a species play a key role in exactly how predator-savvy a curlew can get.”
Dale says Shoshana’s PhD field work has helped Odonata better understand curlew behaviour and travel patterns, which will influence the locations of safe havens for bush stone-curlew populations in the future. Part of the Odonata Foundation’s plans include the reintroduction of curlews into predator-free areas such as Phillip Island Nature Parks, which created a fox-free haven for its world-famous population of little penguins (Eudyptula minor). More recently, the successful reintroduction of eastern barred bandicoots (Perameles gunnii) onto the island demonstrated its potential as a safe habitat for reintroducing other endangered native species like the bush stone-curlew.
In August 2024, 12 curlews from Mt Rothwell sanctuary were released at Oswin Roberts Reserve on the island. Their release formed part of a trial project in partnership with the Odonata Foundation, ANU and Phillip Island Nature Parks. “These curlews were fitted with GPS trackers, so ANU is able to track and monitor their progress,” says Duncan Sutherland, a senior scientist at Phillip Island Nature Parks. “Bush stone-curlews were last seen here in the 1970s, so we are simply returning this species to where it once lived.”
