Seabirds nested again after decades of planting on Lady Elliot Island

Black noddies and other seabirds are nesting in numbers Lady Elliot Island had not seen when the cay was nearly bare. ABC News reported on October 10, 2026, that the coral island, about 80 kilometers off Bundaberg and about 45 hectares, was stripped for guano starting in the 1860s. A lease in 1863 went to Jack Askunas. About 20,000 tonnes of guano were removed. The island stayed barren for more than a century. Goats, and then invasive plants, followed.

Don and Moya Adams began replanting in the 1960s and 1970s from a nursery in Hervey Bay, using casuarina, pandanus, and umbrella trees. Their son Peter Adams continued the work, and the current leaseholders, the Gashes, have kept planting. More than 20,000 native trees, shrubs, and ground-covers have gone in over the past two decades. Christine Dudgeon of Leaf to Reef said the birdlife recovery has been extraordinary. About 100,000 black noddies nest each year, up from a few thousand in the 1960s. Red-tailed tropicbirds started nesting in the 1980s, and those nests appear to be increasing as the vegetation returns.