Seventy percent of the endangered pink cockatoo’s core breeding habitat in Wyperfeld national park’s pine plains was scorched in the January 2025-26 Victorian bushfires, which burned 59,000 hectares within the park. The species depends on slender cypress pines (Callitris gracilis) at least 85 years old for nesting hollows; only 178 such large, old trees remained in the burnt area after the 2014 fires destroyed 97% of cavity-bearing trees across 60% of the plains, and barely a handful survived this event. Dr Victor Hurley, who leads monitoring, describes the cockatoos as the “wimpier kid” in hollow competition with galahs and feral bees, while Parks Victoria and volunteers have since installed 150 artificial hollows and begun replanting cypress pines. The same fires also wiped out 82% of eastern bristlebird habitat at Howe Flat, leading to a 30% population decline, and affected half the available habitat for western beautiful firetail and southern emu-wren in South Australia’s Deep Creek national park.