Proceeds from the online crowd-funding project set up on Monday will pay for a world-first radical breeding program aimed at boosting the number of wild-born orange bellied parrots before they become extinct.

Canberra researchers chose to intervene in attempts to save the parrots that are endemic to southern Australia after discovering weeks ago that only three females and 11 males survived the winter migration from Victoria to Tasmania's southwest Wilderness World Heritage Area.

With these migration levels at a record low, they could not afford to wait for the approval of funding through official channels and opted for online crowdfunding website, Pozible.

Professor Rob Heinsohn from the Fenner School of Environment and Society said he and his team at the ANU were overwhelmed to have smashed their goal of $60,000 in such a short period.

"It happened much faster than we expected," he said.

"We were exhilarated and found it incredibly heart-warming that this has tapped into very deep community concern, not just in Tasmania but elsewhere in Australia."

Professor Heinsohn said the money would help the researchers cleverly intervene in the birds' breeding processes to increase the number of those born in the wild.

"The Tasmanian government took some orange-bellied parrots into captivity a few years ago and have built up a small captive population," Professor Heinsohn said.

"If you release them into the wild they don't know how to survive, but what we can do is use the young that they produce and sneakily put them under monitoring with the wild breeding females and increase the number of young that the wild ones raise so they can learn all the tricks of wild survival and follow the mothers on migration."

He hoped this invervention would ensure wild nestlings were as healthy and fit as possible and ready to make the difficult migration next winter.

Professor Heinsohn was confident there was still hope for the parrot's survival, noting other cases around the world where intense breeding programs had saved a number of bird species.

But he said predicting the success of this program would be like rolling a dice.

"There are no guarantees, and anything could happen such as a predator or disease moving through," he said.

"You always feel like it is pretty dicey but with luck we will have a few more this year and a few more in coming years and slowly dig ourselves out of this hole."

And the program was off to a good start, with three pairs of parrots already laying eggs as of Tuesday.

The $70,000 the community raised will help get more people with the right skills on the ground to find the orange bellied parrot nests and help if something goes wrong.

It will also allow scientists to buy critical equipment like field incubators and brooders, and cover costs for the cross-fostering, flights and other field expenses.

Researchers have bumped their target up to $120,000 on their fundraising page at pozible.com/project/operation-obp