A potentially lethal disease that threatens birds including Canberra's iconic gang-gang cockatoo could soon be a thing of the past.
Researchers from Charles Sturt University are hopeful that after about 20 years working on the first vaccine for beak and feather disease, they will be able to apply to the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority and have the vaccine approved within the next year.
Professors Shane Raidal, a veterinary pathologist, and Jade Forwood, a biochemist, are at the forefront of the research.
Professor Raidal said it had previously been challenging to grow the virus artificially in order to make enough of the vaccine to combat it, but the researchers had now found a way to grow the virus in bacteria.
While the vaccine is not yet available for widespread use by veterinarians, it is being tested under a research licence.
"We've vaccinated nearly 300 birds recently [across] a wide variety of species, including aviary birds, to get a sense that the vaccine is both safe and able to produce the antibody responses that we want," Professor Raidal said.
"We've shown that it's able to do that and we've started vaccinating the captive breeding flocks of the orange-bellied parrots."
Professor Raidal said the vaccine would be useful for all parrot and lorikeet species.
This would include the gang-gang cockatoo, which had at least one case of the highly contagious beak and feather disease among breeding birds in Canberra earlier this year.
In January, the ACT government urged Canberrans to take steps to protect the flock from the "horrible" disease, which kills most birds that contract it.
"It's a really horrible disease," ACT government senior environmental planner Dr Michael Mulvaney said at the time.
"It makes the birds go bald and they die because of lack of thermal regulation, so they either freeze or overheat to death."
Professor Raidal said the beak and feather disease vaccine was intended to be used on birds bred in captivity so that when they were released into the wild, they were immune.
"We've also serendipitously discovered that the vaccine is useful for birds that are already infected," he said.
"So it may also be a cure. We never expected that."
The researchers received a $250,000 grant through the Threatened Species Recovery Fund in 2017, but they are still in need of money to carry out further testing of the vaccine.
A GoFundMe page with a target of $30,000 has so far raised nearly $3000.
"[The money is] to employ people," Professor Raidal said.
"We basically need a full-time veterinarian at the moment to go and do the vaccinations and then take blood samples.
"That takes a lot of time. If you go into an aviary with 100 birds to vaccinate, it's a couple of days' work.
"The more data we have on its effectiveness, the easier it is to register [the vaccine]."