Single, lonely parrot seeks companionship - preservation of the Spix's macaw

International Wildlife, Jan-Feb, 1996 by Marc Margolis

In Brazil, the capture, sale or purchase of wild animals is prohibited. But demanding return of the collectors' macaws surely would have been a complex and drawn-out process, says Natasha Schischakin, who heads the committee's working group on captive breeding. What is more, many of the collectors possessed valuable expertise, such as the ability to reproduce Spix's in captivity. So the committee and the Brazilian government agreed that all holders could participate in the recovery program but would have to give up management of the macaws to the committee so the birds could be treated as a single population. To encourage collector participation, the Brazilian government promised that aviculturists who helped out would be granted one-time amnesty from prosecution for any macaws held illegally.

Apparently moved by the macaw's plight, five private breeders - one in the Philippines, one in Spain, one in Switzerland and two in Brazil - joined the project. One of them, Wolfgang Kiessling, an experienced breeder who owns a huge and profitable zoo, Loro Park, on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, even put up more than $100,000 for the recovery project. The cooperation of these breeders was fundamental to success. All are now full partners in the program. The Sao Paulo Zoo also held birds that had been previously confiscated, and these too joined the managed population.

Even after the politics had been sorted out, the biological challenges remained daunting. These included building up the captive Spix's into a breeding stock for future release and figuring out how to reintroduce a captive female macaw to the wild male and to the species' native habitat.

The committee located an eligible female Spix's in Recife, Brazil, and began to prepare her for release. Caught in the wild as an adult, she had been living a caged life for nearly seven easy years. "If we had released her cold into the wild, she would certainly have died," says Marcos Da Re.

So she went to boot camp, with Da Re as drill sergeant. He led her through an eight-month regimen of flying calisthenics and a Spartan, working-bird's diet. He logged the time she took to crack a pinhao nut, clocked her flights and even counted her wing beats.

The prep course worked. In mid-March, she left the cage. The researchers put food out for her to keep her near the cage while she adjusted to the wild. Soon, she flew away into the caatinga, but within a matter of weeks she turned up again, flying with the male Spix's and his maracana companion. The trio flew together for nearly six weeks, sometimes joined by other maracanas, as this was the time of year when macaws flock in small bands. Hope soared when, at night, the pair of Spix's left the maracanas and roosted together.

Then, one day in June, the female Spix's disappeared. The field biologists suspect that the maracanas split into two groups, with one Spix's macaw joining each group. Until the researchers are sure of the female's whereabouts, they are keeping a constant vigil for her, scouring a 2,000-square-kilometer (772-sq.-mi.) tract of terrain for a blue needle in an immense haystack. Meanwhile, the committee is attempting to boost Spix numbers in captivity. Seven birds hatched in 1995 brought the world total to 39. Release of birds into the wild could be crucial to recovery.