The destruction of Western Australia’s northern jarrah forests for bauxite mining will push a threatened black cockatoo “to and beyond the brink of extinction” if governments allowed it to continue, conservationists have warned.

Mark Henryon, a volunteer with Birdlife Western Australia, said there was a clear choice that would decide whether the endangered Baudin’s black cockatoo would survive. “Baudin’s or bauxite – we can’t have both,” he said.

Henryon has spent years advocating for better protection of what he describes as the state’s “forgotten” black cockatoo.

The dark-feathered, white-cheeked bird with a call like a squeaky gate is endemic to the state’s south west. . . .

2023 under the state’s laws after research found the species’ population had declined by 90% in 40 years.

The proposal would have brought the state conservation status into line with international bodies such as the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which lists the Baudin’s as critically endangered.

But the state’s threatened species scientific committee rejected the nomination, citing insufficient data.

Most of the state’s Baudin’s population breeds in the state’s far south-west and migrates to forage in the northern jarrah forest between the months of March and September each year.

Mining companies in the area have a long history of what the Conservation Council of WA describes as “strip mining” – completely clearing parts of the forest in order to get to the bauxite underneath.

“I’ve seen images of football fields-worth of clearing, and there will be one tree left,” Matt Roberts, the council’s executive director, said.

Roberts said to secure the Baudin’s future, “we need to end mining in forests and [the] clearing of forests for mining”.

“These tree hollows can take hundreds of years to develop. They’re in very old trees. They can’t be rehabilitated or brought back at the pace that the Baudin’s needs them to be.”

The state’s Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) recently opened up Alcoa’s proposals for community consultation; the first time the public has had a chance to scrutinise the company’s operations in the area in 60 years.