February 18, 2007
Night Parrot, Pezoporus occidentalis by William T Cooper from Australian Parrots.
Breaking news for Monday, February 19, 2007, out of Queensland, Australia, acknowledges that a parrot thought extinct has been found.
The Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service says the discovery of a rare bird in outback Queensland will probably attract worldwide scientific interest.
Rangers found a dead night parrot – one of Australia’s rarest birds – in the Diamantina National Park in the state’s far south-west late last year. The last reported sighting was 1990.
The team of Walter Boles (Australian Museum ornithologist), Max Thompson (visiting US ornithologist), and Wayne Longmore (Australian Museum associate), with the Night Parrot, Pezoporus occidentalis, specimen they found in 1990. Photo: C. Bento/Nature Focus.
Keith Twyford from Parks and Wildlife says the parrot is classed as endangered, but the most recent discovery has sparked big interest.
“I suspect it is of international significance, we haven’t got that level of interest just yet but it wouldn’t surprise me if we did,” he said.
“There’s been calls from all across Australia coming into the Queensland Museum and into our office so there’s an enormous amount of interest from the ‘twitchers’ [bird watchers who focus on collecting new species] out there and the scientific and conservation community as well, so it’s a very, very exciting find.”
Mr Twyford says more surveys will now be done.
“Before the big wet that you’ve had out west we had park rangers and park scientists working through western Queensland looking for night parrots,” he said.
“Unsuccessful at this stage and the weather got in our way to continue that but once conditions get a bit better, we’ll be looking to continue that survey work probably in conjunction with Birds Australia, who’ve already indicated they’d be very keen to help us out.”– – Australian Broadcasting Corporation
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Filed under Breaking News, CryptoZoo News, Cryptozoology, Extinct, Forensic Science, Ivory-Billed Woodpecker