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

International Wildlife, Jan-Feb, 1996 by Marc Margolis

Da Re has discovered that protecting the endangered macaw means winning over the human community. So he has added helping the impoverished rural folk to his mission.

Years ago, Curaca was a prosperous village of sheep herders and leather workers whose pastoral bounty paved broad streets, built sturdy buildings, even supported a flourishing theater troupe. Since then, Brazilian palates have turned from mutton to beef, and hides of better quality are imported from Africa or Argentina. As long as they were relatively prosperous, residents of the caatinga did no harm to the naturally rare and delicate local flora. But economic woes brought ecological decline as herders, desperate to make up for shortfalls, ravaged the scant surviving trees for firewood, farms and fences, leaving behind a denuded landscape even more vulnerable to the cyclical dry spells. Now, like the macaw, Curaca barely holds on.

But Da Re has found friends here. "These people are my eyes, my scouts," he says. He has become as involved in their plight as they have in the fate of the little blue macaw. The interest is not just sentimental. Over-grazing and forest cutting have run down not only the Spix's habitat but the productivity of pastures and farms. So Da Re and his team went to work building fences, teaching rotational grazing practices and replanting the caatinga, measures that protect the herders' fields and the macaw's feeding grounds.

Funding the fences, as well as school construction and cultural and sports activities, has not been easy. But the efforts made in behalf of the village have won respect and allies for the macaw. The whole community has become caught up in the effort to save the bird. The plight of the ararinha azul has inspired poems, plays and songs and even a town pageant, where children paraded in blue-feathered costumes. The people of Curaca follow the saga of the airborne dating game the way most Brazilians follow the prime-time telenovelas, or soap operas.

The case of the Spix's macaw, says Da Re, shows how even a poor community like Curaca, if given half a chance, can play a crucial part in conservation. And he expects the effort in Curaca to reverberate elsewhere. "Through the Spix's macaw we are learning not only about the biology of this little-studied bird, but about the environmental history of the entire region," Da Re says. "The macaw is also a flagship species, showing us the way to saving other endangered species."

Mac Margolis is the Brazil correspondent for The Economist and is a contributor to Newsweek. Photographer Claus C. Meyer lives in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.