Baudin's black cockatoo was depicted in 1832 by the English artist Edward Lear in his Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots from a specimen owned by the naturalist Benjamin Leadbeater.

[2] The common name and specific epithet commemorate the French explorer Nicolas Baudin, who led an expedition to Australia in 1801-1804.

[8] The two genera differ in tail colour, head pattern, juvenile food begging calls and the degree of sexual dimorphism.

[10] However, an analysis of protein allozymes published in 1984 revealed the two Western Australian forms to be more closely related to each other than to the yellow-tailed,[11] and the consensus since then has been to treat them as three separate species.

The range of threats to the declining population, estimated to be between ten and fifteen thousand remaining individuals, has been since 2021 listed with the conservation status of Critically Endangered by IUCN.

[1] The bird is part of an annual census, the Great Cocky Count, that has been held every year since 2009 to track the population change of Baudin's and other black cockatoos.

[14] Sites identified by BirdLife International as being important for Baudin's black cockatoo conservation are Araluen-Wungong, Gidgegannup, Jalbarragup, Mundaring-Kalamunda, North Dandalup, the Stirling Range and The Lakes.