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\u201cIt\u2019s gone extinct all across eastern Australia, right under our noses,\u201d says Chris MacColl, a researcher at the University of Queensland and BirdLife Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was still frequently seen in northern New South Wales and south-east Queensland up to the 2000s but after that, the records completely disappear. It has fallen off the map.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the bird being first described in 1801, they were never a common sight and, until recently, relatively little was known about the habits of Australia\u2019s rarest bird of prey. Most birdwatchers have never seen one.<\/p>\n
Now scientists such as MacColl are in a race to understand just how many of the birds might be left so they can refine their plans to save them.<\/p>\n
Dr Richard Seaton, the director of terrestrial birds at BirdLife Australia, spent months looking for them in south-east Queensland in 2013 \u2013 revisiting places where they had been recorded only 15 years earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t find them anywhere. So we started a recovery team,\u201d he says. \u201cAt the time, we didn\u2019t know their home range or what habitats they needed or really what they were doing or where they were going.\u201d<\/p>\n
The species certainly existed as far south as Sydney in the past. In the late 18th century, a convict artist called Thomas Watling drew the bird from a specimen nailed to the side of a settler\u2019s hut in Botany Bay.<\/p>\n
That drawing \u2013 now housed in Britain\u2019s Natural History Museum \u2013 found its way to British ornithologist John Latham, who used it to formally describe the red goshawk in 1801.<\/p>\n
Closer to extinction<\/h2>\n In 2023, the federal government changed the status of the red goshawk from vulnerable to endangered \u2013 assessing it as being closer to extinction \u2013 and estimated there were just 1,300 mature birds left in the wild. MacColl thinks the actual number could be below 1,000.<\/p>\n
The bird\u2019s breeding areas are now restricted to the tropical savannas of the north, from the Kimberley in the west to Cape York on Queensland\u2019s northern tip.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile that area is mostly intact, it has its own issues,\u201d says MacColl, who has been studying the bird for seven years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI worry about climate change and particularly the immense heat and thermal threat risk for the young birds. Then there\u2019s the ongoing threat of habitat loss from agriculture, logging and mining.\u201d<\/p>\nA red goshawk takes flight from its perch at Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary. Photograph: Tim Henderson\/Australian Wildlife Conservancy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSatellite tracking has revealed that some juveniles take a risky 1,500km flight south to central Australia for about eight months \u2013 perhaps learning how to hunt \u2013 before returning for good to their coastal boltholes.<\/p>\n
Just why the species has suffered such a rapid collapse in its range isn\u2019t clear, but Seaton says fragmentation of habitat is likely to blame.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey look for the tallest tree in the tallest stand, and those stands of trees aren\u2019t that common any more,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The red goshawk \u2018glare\u2019<\/h2>\n Red goshawks can be hard to spot and have huge home ranges \u2013 perhaps as big as 600 sq km \u2013 and would historically have always been thinly spread around the landscape, while hugging coastal areas and waterways.<\/p>\n
They are not noisy and Seaton says while most large birds will flee if a human gets close, alerting anyone looking for them, a red goshawk \u201cwill just glare at you\u201d.<\/p>\nBirdlife Australia researchers and Indigenous rangers spotting red goshawks at Litchfield National Park. Photograph: Trade Creative<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThere were only 10 known breeding pairs on the Australian mainland this year, Seaton says, with 10 more on the Tiwi Islands (the largest island in the group, Melville, is now considered the red goshawk\u2019s stronghold).<\/p>\n
BirdLife Australia has been training Indigenous rangers and traditional owners in the north to be able to spot the birds and monitor activity in their metre-wide nests \u2013 built out of thick sticks on horizontal branches \u2013 to see how successful they are at breeding and get a better handle on the actual numbers of red goshawks.<\/p>\n
Tiwi islander Chris Brogan is a firefighter for Plantation Management Partners on Melville Island and is part of a team that monitors the birds, checking activity at nests over 30-minute periods.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re beautiful, but they can be hard to spot because their colours blend in with the trunks of the trees,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started, I thought they were just another bird. I thought they were everywhere. But it\u2019s a bird that\u2019s disappearing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Averting extinction<\/h2>\n MacColl was working as an environmental scientist for Rio Tinto about a decade ago when he first saw a red goshawk nest in western Cape York.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been totally obsessed ever since,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Red goshawks are in a genus of bird that has only one other known member \u2013 Papua New Guinea\u2019s chestnut-shouldered goshawk.<\/p>\nWater receding in claypans and lakes at Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary. Photograph: Tim Henderson\/Australian Wildlife Conservancy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTheir power impresses him. A red goshawk that heads to the forest floor to grab a stick will fly back to a perch 30 metres up \u201cvertically\u201d, he says. \u201cThey go straight up.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere really is nothing like them,\u201d says MacColl. \u201cThey\u2019re not closely related to any other bird of prey in Australia \u2013 they\u2019re on their own branch of the evolutionary tree.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to need a network of people together \u2013 and the best information possible to know what they need. That\u2019s how we avert extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n