Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00482:reg:1:p3
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00482
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 1 (pt 3/16)
Character Range: 17056–19885

and flashes of bright red under the wing enable the species to be readily identified.

1.3                 Distribution
The Swift Parrot breeds in Tasmania during the summer and migrates north to mainland Australia for winter (Figure 1). The breeding range of the Swift Parrot is mainly in the east and south-east regions of Tasmania (Figure 2), with the location of breeding each year being determined largely by the distribution and intensity of Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globulus) and Black Gum (E. ovata) flowering (Webb et al. 2014). The flowering patterns of these species varies dramatically in location and extent between years (Webb et al. 2017). Swift Parrots also occasionally breed in the north-west of the state, between Launceston and Smithton, however, the number of birds involved is low, probably because the remaining breeding habitat is scarce and highly fragmented. Swift Parrots have also been found breeding on the west coast of Tasmania near Zeehan, and on King and Flinders Islands (M. Webb unpublished data).
Swift Parrots disperse widely on the mainland, foraging on flowers and lerps in eucalyptus species, mainly in Victoria and New South Wales. In Victoria, Swift Parrots are predominantly found in the dry forests and woodlands of the box-ironbark region on the inland slopes of the Great Dividing Range. There are a few records each year from the Melbourne and Geelong districts and they are occasionally recorded south of the divide in the Gippsland region.
In New South Wales, Swift Parrots forage in forests and woodlands throughout the coastal and western slopes regions each year. Coastal regions in New South Wales tend to support larger numbers of birds when inland habitats are subjected to drought, as occurred in 2002 and 2009 (Tzaros et al. 2009).
Small numbers of Swift Parrots are observed in the Australian Capital Territory and in south-eastern Queensland on a regular basis. The species is less frequently observed in the Southern Mount Lofty Ranges and the Bordertown-Naracoorte area in south-eastern South Australia (Saunders and Tzaros 2011).

1.4                 Population and trends
The Swift Parrot occurs as a single, panmictic migratory population (Stojanovic et al. 2018). In 2010, the Action Plan for Australian Birds suggested there were approximately 2,000 mature individuals in the wild (Garnett et al. 2011), but has declined since and was estimated to be 750 (range 300 to 1,000) mature individuals in 2020 (Webb et al. 2021). A preliminary study using genetic data has estimated the effective population size (Ne) of the Swift Parrot to be between 60 and 338 individuals (Olah et al. 2020) noting that Ne is a parameter commonly used in population genetics to quantify loss of genetic variation in populations and it is often smaller than the census population size (Nc)