Dianna Rose has planted out her garden with food for disappearing black cockies, and is urging others to do the same.

REPRESENTATIVES from the Save The Black Cockatoos campaign will be meeting with a senior policy officers from planning minister Rita Saffioti’s office this coming week to appeal for the McGowan government to reinstate plans that would preserve remaining pines in Gnangara.

The pines sit above an important aquifer and because they’re so thirsty there have been long-term plans to harvest the trees to try and protect the underground water, but conservationists fear this could doom the local black cockies to extinction.

STBC campaigner Paddy Cullen said the group had also put in a referral to the EPA, calling for the pines to be protected.

But it’s not just the government that can help; Dianna Rose has been monitoring black cockatoos in Hamilton Hill for two decades and has planted her garden with their favourite tucker including the pincushion hakea. 

As part of the Nannas for Native Forests movement, she has started putting up posters with artwork created by her daughter Eleanor Davies to get people phoning and emailing premier Mark McGowan urging him 

to save the cockies – known as Ngolyenok in Noongar.  

Numbers of Ngolyenok have fallen by 35 per cent in the Perth Peel area in recent years and its predicted this will halve again if the Gnangara pines are cleared. 

STBC is also appealing for homeowners to plant eucalypts, banksias and hakeas over winter (when it’s not too hot), saying APACE nursery in North Fremantle has good stock.