Cassowarys

We are two 8 and 9 year old boys that love cassowarys.

The cassowary of the rainforest of Northern Queensland is in a lot of trouble and more than half the Australian population do not even know that such a bird exists.

The Australian cassowary, the second largest bird in the world, is a very beautiful and a very important bird that lives in our northern rainforest. Some biologists claim that without the cassowary at least 200 species of trees and plants could not grow naturally in the rainforest.

The cassowary walks around the forest floor and picks up the fallen fruit, that fruit is an important part of the cassowary’s diet. After the seed has passed through the cassowary the seed can then germinate.

There are many types of plants, fungi, insects, reptiles, birds and mammals that can only exist because of those trees and plants. So, the cassowary is a very important ‘keystone species’. It is not the only keystone species in the rainforest, but there is a whole chain of events that may only happen in the rainforest because of the cassowary.

When Captain Cook arrived in North Queensland he released the first pigs into Australia. Like all the other ferals: - the cats, foxes, cane toads and the clear-fell woodchip companies etc; the pigs have become a scourge to the nature of Australia. Wild pigs are now in their thousands. In the rainforest they eat the fallen fruit that should be the food of the cassowary. The pigs destroy the seed so they then cannot grow and the cassowaries are starving in their own forest.

The cassowaries have to travel to the edge of the forest in search of food. Often domestic dogs will then chase them. Some people report seeing cassowaries being run to their death or run into the sea and drowned by domestic dogs.

Because cassowaries are starving they get used to people giving them food, they may then chase people and in rare cases kick them and so get a bad name. But, like the dingoes on Fraser Island, they are starving and it’s not their fault; it is ours. We have caused the problem so we must fix it.

The most optimistic figures for the cassowary is just over a thousand left in the wild. Even if the number were 2000 it would still be a national disgrace. The numbers are now falling rapidly. Many birds are too old to breed and the young cassowaries find it hard to survive the pigs and dogs. Every year cassowaries are hit by cars and there are still some so-called sportsmen who shoot cassowaries.

Did you know that we the Australian public could breed cassowaries at no cost to the government and get the numbers back to at least to a safe level? So that, when we rid the land of pigs we would have some cassowaries with which to restock the rainforest. Strangely though, we are not allowed to breed the cassowaries back to safe numbers because cassowaries are rare.

It appears that Germany would buy every wild pig that we could catch. I say catch, because you cannot shoot the pigs, they are too smart; as soon as you shoot one the rest will disappear. However because they are smart you can trick them into traps. An industry is out there just waiting to happen.

We found this information at www.snakeshow.net