The night parrot is a beautiful green and yellow bird native to Australia. These birds are nocturnal, nesting on the ground and favoring desert environments. The night parrot is extremely lightweight and small, and it hides during the day in foliage. It is known by its scientific name Pezoporus occidentalis, and by its Manyjilyjarra — an Aboriginal language -- name, ngarrijirri. Before today's survey, did you know about night parrots?

The research team spent a few years surveying 31 sites in the Ngururrpa Indigenous Protected Area (IPA). The Ngururrpa IPA is in Western Australia in the Great Sandy Desert. Spanning over 29,000 square miles, it is a harsh but beautiful landscape. People have been living in this region for the last 12,000 years alongside animals, like the marsupial mole, the great desert skink, and the night parrot. For visitors who are less acclimated to dry climates, the newly invented device that can pull drinking water from the air may be your friend. It has been proven to work even in deserts. If health and money were not an issue, would you like the travel to this desert in Western Australia for a chance to see a night parrot?

The bird has been thought to be extinct for the last 100 years. No one has seen it. Though this bird is known to be difficult to spot and prone to hiding, with so many decades passing without a sighting, it was thought the night parrot might be gone forever. However, new research has proven that this special species of native Australian wildlife is still alive. With proper fire management practices, the night parrot can be saved for the future, and all of the Ngururrpa IPA can benefit from it. Do you think that humans have an obligation to be good stewards of natural environments and the creatures that only exist there, like night parrots in Western Australia?

Across these 31 desert sites explained in Q2, the researchers used a specific type of acoustic recorder to see if the night parrots were living there. At promising locations, they set up camera traps. They also went to collect scat samples from local predators and analyzed the samples for potential night parrot victims. Finally, the research team went through 40 years' worth of satellite images of the area. It was an exciting moment to determine that out of the 31 sites analyzed, 17 of them had night parrots, with 10 roosting areas present. The furthest north-to-south sites found were 99 miles apart, and the furthest east to west sites found were 55 miles apart. Not only are the night parrots still in existence, but they are also fairly widespread. Are you glad that night parrots are not extinct after all?