At the entrance to Wyperfeld national park, in north-west Victoria, more than a dozen pink cockatoos are sprinkled across a hedge row of pine trees like Christmas decorations. These are Aleppo pines, not the native conifers that the birds rely on for nesting habitat and as a primary source of food.

Still, the feathered ornaments appear quite content, nestled in among the spruce and ripping into pine cones with their dexterous claws and beaks, making gentle cracking sounds that punctuate the soft roar of Mallee winds.

It’s a blissful scene that belies the devastation ahead. Inside the park, 70% of the cockatoo’s core habitat, an area known as “pine plains”, was scorched in January’s devastating bushfires, leaving charcoal shadows and empty space.

That’s bad news for Lophochroa leadbeateri, an endangered bird previously known as the Major Mitchell’s cockatoo. The ecologist Dr Victor Hurley calls them “flame-crested”, or sometimes simply “flamin’ cockatoos”, referencing their fiery red and yellow striped crest, and the blaze of salmon pink under their wings.

Hurley, who has spent decades monitoring the birds, says the species relies on slender cypress pines, a native tree called Callitris gracilis, for their breeding hollows. But to accommodate a growing cockatoo family, the trees must be ancient, he says – at least 85 years old, and ideally 125 years or more.

Very large, old pines were already vanishingly rare, thanks to a legacy of land clearing and major fires in 2014, which tore through 60% of pine plains, destroying 97% of the known cavity-bearing trees in the burnt area.

That was before the 2025-26 bushfires, which torched 440,000 hectares of land across Victoria – larger than the area which burned on Black Saturday, according to the state government. Of that, 59,000 hectares was in Wyperfeld park.

The fires took their toll on many endangered birds. Eastern bristlebirds lost 82% of their habitat at Howe Flat near Mallacoota, a key stronghold for the species. Post-fire surveys of the surviving population showed a 30% decrease in numbers. In South Australia, fires in Deep Creek national park affected half of the available habitat for western beautiful firetail and Mt Lofty Ranges southern emu-wren.

Homes for the ‘wimpy’ kids

Two fires in 12 years is devastating for the cockatoos at Wyperfeld, the largest breeding site for the cockatoos in Victoria, Hurley says. Previously there were 178 large, old native pines within the burnt area. Barely a handful remain.

A small unburnt grove at the eastern end of the park offers a glimpse at the kind of habitat that has now been lost. The sparsely treed patch of semi-arid woodland is dotted with hardy casuarina and slender cypress pines. Small lichens and mosses are growing on the sandy forest floor.

Here stands something resembling a crucifix. Strapped to the top of a repurposed power pole is a hollowed out log with a bird-sized door. It’s an early proof-of-concept for an artificial hollow, MacGyvered by Hurley back in 2009.

As long as a tree is large enough, cockatoos will excavate their own living space, clearing out the cavity and tidying up.

Once available, competition for the hollows is fierce. “The flame-cresteds seem to be the wimpier kid in the school yard,” Hurley says, often losing out to more assertive galahs, or feral European honeybees that fill the space with honeycomb. The problem is not just the lack of hollows, but also their limited availability.

Hurley, and a small but dedicated band of volunteers known as the Mallee Woodpeckers, have spent innumerable hours monitoring the birds, tracking their breeding and feeding behaviours, and working to address the deficit of available hollows by building artificial ones.

More modern designs are now carved into the trunks of trees that have died but remain standing, including those charred on the outside.

They chainsaw a slice out of the tree, carve out a space inside – at least 20cm wide – and replace an arc of the outer bark wood to make it weatherproof. The final product is barely noticeable to the untrained eye – just a tiny door opening on to a cosy space, and sometimes a perch point.

Together with Parks Victoria, about 150 new hollows have been added to the park.

Will Trimble, an area chief ranger for the southern Mallee at Parks Victoria, says it is exciting to see cockatoos investigating the artificial hollows, even as they are being built. In addition to creating new hollows to “reduce competition for a nesting spot”, the public land manager is planting more slender cypress pines to replace those lost in the fires.

“Parks Victoria rangers are doing our best to help native animals and plants recover from the fires,” he says. “Pink cockatoos are one of the highlights of Wyperfeld national park and we want to see them thrive.”

Barengi Gadjin Land Council, which represents local traditional owners, says the destruction of cockatoo habitat is a “major concern”. “The pink cockatoo features in our stories and is an important species for us,” says Colin Gorton, the council’s on Country manager.

While the land council supports both short and long-term recovery efforts, Gorton says “it will be many years before the trees, lost to the fires, will be able to support the pink cockatoo population in the region”.

Michael Gooch runs wildlife tours and accommodation with his partner on their large bush reserve next door to the park, and volunteers his time to help keep an eye on the cockatoos. They had a car packed “ready to go” throughout the fire season, at one point relocating a guest from Canada to the Patchewollock pub.

The birds are a “massive drawcard” for local and international visitors, he says, especially given the growing popularity of birdwatching among younger generations. Most of their guests are birders, Gooch says, in search of the “Mallee trinity”: pink cockatoos, regent parrots and malleefowl.

Apart from the few remaining old trees, the next cohort of pines sprouted sometime in the 1990s, and are still half a century away from being suitable for nesting hollows. The younger pines serve another important purpose, as food.

Jane White, an environmental scientist who volunteers with the Mallee Woodpeckers, says the cockatoos like to travel with a “packed lunch”. “You often see them carrying a Callitris branch with a seed across the landscape.”

It’s a reciprocal arrangement. The birds are the main seed dispersers for the pines, she says, and – as long as the tree is large enough – they excavate their own hollows, which a myriad of lizards, mammals and other birds rely on.

“They’re invested in their community,” she says. “They’re helping with providing houses and food and shelter and all the other bird life.”

Fiona Murdoch, the founder of the Friends of Mallee Conservation, has a couple of “pinkies” on her conservation property, part of which was also burnt in the fires.

“They fly over most days and they generally bring their young one back to show us,” she says.

Murdoch says she feels “pretty shattered” by the loss of so many old trees. “It’s been a pretty horrible few months. The trees are hundreds of years old, so they’re not coming back in my lifetime.”

Artificial hollows aren’t an ideal solution, she says, but it’s the only one available in our lifetime. “We can’t magic up a tree, but you can build a habitat hollow.”