Emu - Austral Ornithology

The focus of Emu has not always been so scientifically based. Older volumes of Emu contained a wide variety of annotated lists, notes on birds and their behaviour, and accounts of expeditions of ornithological discovery. Importantly, they also laid the foundations of the research and conservation activities which are synonymous with our organisation, now BirdLife Australia. Did you know that the earliest bird-banding activities in Australia were overseen by Birds Australia? That we were the first bird organisation to get involved in international conservation campaigns when it successfully fought to have the trade in egret plumes banned? It's all there in Emu.

The papers published in Emu are filled with observations and scientific results that are, cumulatively, vital to our understanding of so many of Australia's birds and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. For example, much of the information included in our Handbook of Australian, New Zealand, and Antarctic Birds (HANZAB) was gleaned from the pages of Emu.

In 1997, the late Dr Norman Wettenhall, a prominent member of Birds Australia, commissioned Dr Libby Robin to write a book that would celebrate not just the organisation, but would review the twentieth century in Australian ornithology. After several years of research and over 200 interviews, the result is The Flight of the Emu, a major scientific and social history. This history salutes the Emu's longevity and ability to revitalise itself over the changing course of the century.