Invasion of the Cassowaries
Passions run high in an Australian town: Should the endangered birds be feared—or fed?
- By Brendan Borrell
- Smithsonian magazine, October 2008, Subscribe
Ripe fruit plunks to the ground and rolls to the road at my left. That instant, the cassowary bursts from a tangle of ferns outside Clump Mountain National Park near Mission Beach, Australia. The bird's sharp beak is pointed roughly at my neck. Her eyes bulge. She probably weighs about 140 pounds, and as she thumps past me her red wattles swing to and fro and her black feathers give off an almost menacing shimmer. Local residents call her Barbara, but somehow the name doesn't fit the creature in front of me. She looks like a giant, prehistoric turkey—a turkey, however, that could disembowel me with a swipe of its nearly five-inch claws. Luckily, she just wants the mango, which she scoops up whole and mashes with her beak.
Although many of Australia's mammals are, to North Americans anyway, infamous oddballs—from the duck-billed platypus to the eucalyptus-munching koala—the cassowary is gaudy proof that its birds can be just as strange. The southern cassowary is related to the emu and native to the tropical forests of New Guinea and northern Australia. (Two other smaller cassowary species live in New Guinea.) Fewer than 1,500 southern cassowaries live in Australia, where they are endangered; much of their Queensland rain-forest habitat has been cleared for sugar cane and banana plantations.
While programs to protect koalas, which are not an endangered species, draw in millions of dollars in donations, cassowary conservation just squeaks by in the arid continent's last tropical outpost. But the ruggedly independent folk of Queensland feel a bond with their local emblem of biodiversity—everything from stuffed toys to cassowary-themed wind chimes can be purchased along the Cassowary Coast—perhaps out of respect for a flightless creature that's able to eke out an existence despite suffocating heat and devastating storms. And like the cassowaries, Queenslanders have long felt underappreciated; indeed, some urbanites in Sydney and Melbourne refer to them as "banana-benders," as if they have nothing better to do than put the crook in tropical fruit.
But the ornery cassowary is not an easy creature to love. In fact, it ranks as the world's most dangerous bird, at least according to Guinness World Records. A cassowary can charge up to 30 miles an hour and leap more than 3 feet in the air. On each foot are three claws—one slightly curved like a scimitar, the other two straight as daggers—that are so sharp New Guinea tribesmen slide them over spear points. The last person known to have been killed by a cassowary was 16-year-old Phillip McLean, whose throat was punctured on his Queensland ranch in 1926. There have been plenty of close calls since: people have had ribs broken, legs cracked and flesh gashed.
In Mission Beach (pop. 992), two hours south of Cairns, cassowaries have lately come out of the forest, cruising the streets and looking, it seems, for trouble. They peck at bedroom windows, chase cars and tangle with pet terriers.
Townspeople are divided over what to do about the invasion. Many want the birds back in the forest. But others enjoy feeding them, even though that's against the law. They claim that the birds need the handouts: a 15-year drought, a building boom and Cyclone Larry in 2006 wiped out many of the area's native fruit trees, which were prime cassowary food. One woman told me she spends $20 per week on bananas and watermelons for a pair of local birds named Romeo and Mario. "I feed them," she said. "I always have and I always will."
Biologists say she's not doing the birds a favor. "A fed bird is a dead bird," the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service insists on posters and brochures, underscoring the idea that luring the birds into town endangers them. Since the cyclone, some 20 cassowaries, out of a local population of perhaps 100, have died after being hit by cars or attacked by dogs. Wildlife wardens—clad in chain-saw chaps and groin protectors and wielding giant nets—regularly transport problem cassowaries to more suitable habitat.
To see how life in the cul-de-sacs of Mission Beach has affected the largest native land animal in northern Australia, I visited the Garners Beach cassowary rehabilitation facility five miles north of town. Steve Garrad, a conservation officer for the Australian Rainforest Foundation, was wearing a dirt-streaked khaki outfit and a pair of gaiters to ward off the region's infernal leeches. We entered a pen where a knee-high cassowary chick was zipping along like a teenager on a skateboard. Rocky had been plucked from a dog's mouth in South Mission Beach a few months earlier. Cassowary chicks are striped for camouflage, and Rocky seemed to vanish in the shady enclosure. We finally cornered him near an artificial pond. "It'll lose those stripes in three months' time," Garrad said, "and become a pretty ugly-looking mousy brown." In about a year, Rocky will burst into his adult colors and develop wattles and the species' most remarkable feature: the casque atop its head.
It's an odd structure, neither horn nor bone; it has a hard covering but is spongy inside and somewhat flexible overall. Some researchers have speculated that cassowaries use the strange protuberance as a crash helmet to deflect thick foliage while running through the jungle, or perhaps as a weapon for settling territorial disputes. Ornithologists in New Guinea have proposed another function: amplifier. They reported seeing cassowaries inflate their necks, vibrate their bodies and emit a pulsing boom that drops below the threshold of human hearing. "An unsettling sensation," is how one author described standing in front of a thrumming bird.
Cassowary males and females look pretty much the same when they're young, but females eventually grow about a foot taller, reaching some six feet. They start breeding at age 4 or 5 and can live 40 years or more. The birds are solitary aside from brief encounters during the breeding season. Females abandon their one-pound eggs soon after laying them, and males build a rudimentary nest on the forest floor and incubate up to five eggs for almost two months. After chicks hatch, they follow the male for six to nine months as he protects them from predators such as wild pigs and dogs, and guides them to fruit trees within a home range several hundred acres in size. Scientists studying cassowary scat have identified the seeds of 300 plant species, making the bird a key player in spreading rain-forest plants over great distances.
At the rehab center, Rocky retreated back into the shadows. He has made a full recovery after his encounter with the dog. Adult male cassowaries will adopt orphaned chicks, and Garrad hoped to find a surrogate dad in the wild that would rear Rocky. Garrad said it's sometimes hard to send the little ones off to an uncertain fate, but the best thing for wildlife is to return to the wild.
Brendan Borrell is based in Brooklyn.
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Comments (422)
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cassowaries r AWESOME!!
Posted by on May 4,2012 | 03:29 PM
Nice post,
I learned a lot of information from this post. Thanks for the effort you took to expand upon this topic so thoroughly.
I look forward to future posts.
Posted by Key Property Group on May 7,2010 | 04:57 PM
For all of you who wrote about not being "conservationists", I tell you now, IT IS OUR JOB!! If you don't conserve the earth, it will NOT continue to support you.
I wish all of those who don't care to conserve that which we have yet to poison or destroy on earth a swift spaceship off of earth. It's obvious they don't care about living here any longer. I'm not wishing the human blight on another planet, just wishing the selfish morons to all go away together and enjoy each other's company.
For the rest of us, the list swells by the day. Plants, reptiles, mammals, fish, primates, birds, etc....too many lists are coming to an end. It has to change. NOW.
Posted by keith on January 13,2010 | 06:57 PM
I read pretty much all the comments before mine.i think humans (including me)we destroy everything in our path:enough its enough.everyone,should take responsability.from the day we wake up,teaching the new generation,if we leave any animal ave by then.because at the end ,we aourselves be dead too.the govt doesnt care its all about the mighty dollar.taking the animals habitats for a profit.and its not only here its everywhere in the world.
Posted by yuri villarreal on December 20,2009 | 09:02 PM
"a 15-year drought" - I would like to know what drought the article is referring to? I have lived here for a good proportion of that 15 years and yes there are some years when we don't quite make it to the average of 4 metres of rain (over 13 feet).
The main danger for these animals is animal clearance and the residents in the area of mission beach. It seems people come here, fall in love with the rainforest and decide they want to live a pristine rainforest lifestyle.
They then get their block of land and remove all the trees, plant a football field of grass and complain that there should be a closer golf course than the one at El Arish.
The amount of development here is appalling, one of the more recent development applications is for an 18 hole golf course, 2 x 6 star resorts and a development area including town houses and normal house for over 300 residents. If you read the article it talks of a population of just over 900 people and with that development it will increase the population, increase the road traffic and kill more birds.
People only care looking in from the outside, they don't care if they can make an easy profit selling their block of land they bought for $20,000 10 years ago for over $500,000 to a developer.
That is my small rant.
Posted by Tully on July 7,2009 | 08:27 PM
I live in Queensland and I don't care about being called a banana Bender we call the other states names to. Victorians get called Mexicans and New South Wales gets called things too (Queenslanders have long felt underappreciated; indeed, some urbanites in Sydney and Melbourne refer to them as "banana-benders," as if they have nothing better to do than put the crook in tropical fruit).
Posted by Just me on February 11,2009 | 06:19 PM
I am on the management committe of the Community for Costal and Cassowary Conservtion Inc (C4). The recent building boom in our area has deprived the birds of valuable food by the destruction, fragmentation and degradaiton of their habitat.
Although they are potentially dangerous the ones that live on the fringe of urban areas coexist with very little threat. They are shy and go about their way without confilict if there is no hand feeding or presence of dogs. Shame about the photo making it seem much more frightening than they are. I would like the chance to send a much more representative photo that shows how magnificent they are.
The story goes that the boy who was killed was taunting the bird with dogs and his neck was cut as the bird was fleeing and ran over him.
The stories of the birds coming to peoples houses was immediately following the devstating cyclone in 2006 and many people were feeding them. This is not a normal occurance and when the forest began supplying fruit again they moved back.
C4 has a land gift fund to help secure existing unprotected habitat on private land at Mission Beach which supports the highest density of cassowares in Australia. We are becoming desperate to save this iconic endangered speicies from extinction and would welcome any support by way of ambassadorship or donations for our gift fund or any other way that you can suggest.
Please contact me on 0011 61 7 4068 7315 or liz@lizgallie.com for further information or suggestions.
Posted by Liz Gallie on January 29,2009 | 01:30 AM
Gday sent story on cassowaries and seeds. We live at Port Douglas. We are at 16deg 31min S and 145deg 27min E. gives some idear were they live. Bazza
Posted by Barry McCarthy "Bazza" on January 15,2009 | 07:29 PM
Gday good to see all the reports. I live in Port Douglas. The Barrier Reef on one side the Daintree Rain Forest the other. For years locals have try to grow rainforest trees from seed. Not that much successful. We knew were the seed fruit came from. But some years later (1998 0n ward) we went into the Daintree forest on the north side of the river. And went looking for Cassowary dropping. Not hard to see about the size of a foot print. Or a spade full. It was dry. Take back to green or shade house and broken up and the seed taken with sum dung on it and planted in tubes. Some times a 70% grow. After three years I did notice that a lot of the dropings were in a area open to the sky. Not than many big trees. The Cassowary is the gardener of the rain Forest. Only once did I come up against a Big Bird. Did not see it at fist, saw the three young (Brown with light strips). About three feet tall. I did not move then saw I belive a big male. There was a tree next to me. But it was all over in 30sec. it and the young moved back in to the cover. They have their place on earth and that is the rain forest. Bazza.
Posted by Barry McCarty "Bazza" on January 15,2009 | 07:24 PM
No, we really shouldn't hand feed Cassowaries or feed them food that doesn't occur in the wild. Unfortunately, we may have to, under carefully managed regimes, subsidise their food resources, especially during times of stochastic events, as the habitat that has been left for them is not really able to sustain long term viable populations. Government help? The best help is increasing the size of their habitats. The Government won't seriously aid in this if it doesn't generate more money then agriculture/mines/urban development To all those that pit man above the cassowary, you're sick individuals and part of the problem
Posted by Cam on January 14,2009 | 12:05 AM
Are there no homeless human beings in australia? Sure, I'm all for preserving the world's endangered species, but how many of you crying out for the poor big birdie look the other way when you encounter a human in need? Oh, i know, those people CHOOSE to be indigent....the poor birds are suffering because of us. Species cease to exist, be the reason environmental or thru the fault of a competing species.....this has always happened. some humans, it seems, are more concerned about SEEMING to be distraught over a bird or lizard than humans, even children, in desperate need. donate to save a bird on another continent? Try giving to a food bank in your hometown instead.....the humans you feed will appreciate it.
Posted by earl mcgibboney on January 14,2009 | 11:44 PM
what makes cassowary a bird??
Posted by reyjay on January 6,2009 | 01:10 AM
To all concerned Cassowary friends. The Australian Rainforest Foundation WWW.ARF.NET.AU is doing a lot to help their plight, but we need extra voices out there to spread the word and raise more funds. Our project is know as OPERATION BIG BIRD. We will be hosting the first International Cassowary Conference next April in Cairns, Australia. Watch our website for further updates. Buy a square of Rainforst or adopt a Cassowary. www.arf.net.au/operationbigbird
Posted by John Paul McFadden on October 6,2008 | 09:50 PM
Visit www.arf.net.au to learn of the work that the Australian Rainforest Foundation is doing to save this magnificent bird and how you may be able to help.
Posted by Steven Garrad on October 6,2008 | 09:34 PM
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