Nest Incentive Scheme launched.

The Recovery Team has launched a new scheme to reward landholders for discovery of ‘new’ Red-tail nest sites, with a grant from the Nature Foundation of South Australia. The new scheme kicked off on June 1st 2011 and will extend to March 31st 2012.

After 20 years of searching for Red-tail nests, only 80 have been discovered. Tim Burnard, Project Coordinator, said “We believe there are many more active nests out there, and look forward to talking to farmers and landholders to help us find them”.
When a Red-tail nest is discovered the project team are called in to place a collar on the nest to protect it from predators, like Brush-tailed Possums. The nest location is recorded and helps us understand more about ideal nesting sites for Red-tails. This data uncovers the distance of a nest from a preferred food source, which in turn helps us prioritise habitat to protect and restore.
An incentive of $500 will go to landholders for each ‘new’ nest found on their land. A ‘new’ nest is one that has not been recorded in our database. The same amount will be paid to local community members who report a ‘new’ nest on public land. A $100 one-off payment will be made for each eligible nest site that is on our database but found to be in use again.
While reporting of all Red-tail nesting activity is encouraged, interference or physical disturbance to nest trees is prohibited. All observation should be done from a safe distance. Disturbed birds may abandon their nest, which will result in no payment being awarded.
There are a number of conditions required when applying for the scheme. Incentive payments will be made once the sighting has been confirmed by the project team.
Guidelines for the nest incentive scheme and information on Red-tail nesting behaviour are available on the 'Nest Incentive' page