It’s hoped Troppo and Hope will help boost the numbers of their endangered species in the wild.
Troppo the southern cassowary’s 1,400-kilometre journey from the Gold Coast to Townsville will be well worth it if Hope finds him to be a suitable mate.
Jordan Mountney is a birdkeeper at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary and runs the national breeding program for the southern cassowary.
“Troppo has been living with us since 1993. Unfortunately, we haven’t had a huge amount of success with him, so we thought we’d send him up here,” Mr Mountney says.
“Hopefully, sparks fly.”
Mr Mountney says one of the biggest problems with captive populations is the limited genetic pool to choose from when finding a match for the animals.
“When we are pairing birds, we look at the genetics and the lineage to make sure these birds are suited to each other,” he says.
Mr Mountney says the main purpose of the breeding program is to make an “insurance population”.
“So that if, God forbid, something happens to the birds in the wild, we have a large amount of information that we have learnt and found from those birds that we can then use to hopefully recover the species,” he says.
“I think he’s going to be pretty smitten with her. They seem like they’ll be a very good pairing.
“They might not hit it off right off the bat, kind of like people. You can’t just put two of them in the same room and hope for the best. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time to get to know each other.”
