Wildlife

Cameras Can Lie!

"This was a monumental incident for a bird species that attracts the affections of all but the most hardened fisherman. All of the pelicans in Australia had converged on Lake Eyre and their chicks were dying a pitiful slow death from starvation. The camera never lies."

Back in 1989, viewers of A Current Affair were shocked to learn that "all the pelicans in Australia had converged on Lake Eyre" and were now dying in droves. In a frenzy of sensationalist journalism and misrepresentation, this television program managed to create a completely inappropriate wave of public sympathy for a species that had just enjoyed one of their most successful breeding periods for years.

The floods of 1989 filled many inland Australian lakes, the largest of which is, of course, Lake Eyre. At its peak, the pelican colony that inhabited the lake in 1989/90 was estimated to number around 100,000 pelicans - that represents 80-90% of Australia's pelicans. During the time that the lake was full, the pelicans fledged an estimated 80,000 chicks - the population of Australia's pelicans almost doubled in one year!

The massive colony of Australian pelicans at Lake Eyre South in 1990

Many of the juvenile pelicans from this colony were banded by John and a team of bird banders, and some of the alleged "starving to death" chicks were later found up to 1,300 kilometres away in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

The pelican colony was a
 spectacular sight at sunset

Some of these banded pelican chicks were later
 recovered from as far away as Cape York