Spix's Macaw

by Tony Juniper

  Whatever the reason for its long-term rarity, the most serious immediate danger was trapping for the live parrot market. Ever since its discovery by scientists in 1978, and certainly before then too, the relict population of Lear’s Macaws has been subject to capture for commerce. The main method used by the trappers is to wait until the birds have gone to roost in their traditional cliffs and then, after dark, to lower nets down in front of their holes. When the birds wake before dawn and try to leave for their morning food, they become entangled in the mesh. They are hoisted up, crated and shipped out to the rich buyers who will pay a fortune for them.

  Although other groups of Lear’s Macaws have subsequently been discovered in other remote canyons of the Raso da Catarina, the upper population estimate is still tiny. The initial estimate of about 60 was revised upwards to about 120 with the discovery of a new population. More groups were subsequently found, pushing the total number of wild birds to 246 by 2001. Given these changes to the total known population, any estimation of the proportion of birds trapped and traded is very problematic. But from this tiny group of very slow-breeding birds, and in spite of the best efforts of under-resourced conservation workers, it is certain that dozens have been trapped and traded.

  The dealer who was notorious for catching Spix’s Macaw also specialised in the supply of Lear’s Macaws. He boasted about capturing some 40 or 50 of the birds. He said that for one of the first pairs of Lear’s Macaws he supplied he was paid US$13,000 and given a new car too.

  In 2000, information collected by scientists observing the cliff-nesting macaws suggested that, of the 43 suspected breeding pairs in the study area, only 3 produced young. Thus at the start of the third millennium, with trapping still a constant problem, the fate of the Lear’s Macaw hangs in the balance.

  THE HYACINTH MACAW

  The Hyacinth Macaw is doing better, at least comparatively speaking. The range of this truly magnificent parrot is vast compared to the Lear’s and Glaucous Macaws, embracing large swaths of the interior of Brazil. Three main population centres exist: one in the drier transitional rainforests of the southern Amazon basin, one in the dry Gerais region of central Brazil, and one in the vast Pantanal wetlands of south-west Brazil, from where its range spills over into neighbouring parts of north-east Bolivia and marginally to northern Paraguay.

  Nevertheless, like the Glaucous Macaw centuries before, these parrots are under pressure because of the conversion of palm savannas to agricultural production. Huge areas of the interior of Brazil have been turned over to large-scale farming and the macaw’s range has shrunk. Proposals to drain large parts of the Pantanal wetlands, the one place where these birds still have an apparent stronghold, are a constant threat. Even where total habitat conversion has been avoided, the macaws still suffer from the loss of large trees. These huge parrots depend on the few species of leguminous trees that are large enough to provide them with nesting holes; otherwise they may not reproduce. In the Pantanal big trees are taken for building materials or cut down to deny shelter for vampire bats that suck the blood of the cattle there.

  In the north of their range in the southern Amazon basin, the macaws are hunted by the Indians for feathers to make into headdresses and other adornments. Although this traditional practice was not a problem historically, it became so as the tribal people increasingly came into contact with tourists and traffickers willing to pay substantial sums for spectacular souvenirs containing the long feathers of ten individual Hyacinth Macaws. And in common with most large animals in rural Brazil, they were widely shot for the pot.

  All of this had by the 1980s drastically reduced the population of wild Hyacinth Macaws. But the real problem was the ferocious pressure bearing down from trappers feeding the insatiable global market for blue macaws. Despite the best efforts of wildlife campaigners and enforcement agencies, the traffickers had by the late 1980s ensured that there were quite a lot more Hyacinth Macaws in captivity than there were in the wild. Some were smuggled directly out from Brazil to international markets; others were taken from the interior via private airstrips to Bolivia and Paraguay. Once there the macaws were ‘laundered’ either as captive-bred or as taken from the wild in those countries where wildlife exports were still legal until the 1980s, or they were simply smuggled in to markets with no attempt to falsify documents or cover up the birds’ true origin.

  These parrots’ habitual use of particular trees for roosting or nesting, their daily routine of visiting particular favourite palms, their curiosity and relative fearlessness made them easy prey for the trappers. Even in the early 1980s when trade was still ‘legal’ from the point of view of international law, a single bird would fetch upwards of US$2,000 in the United States.

  But the scale of the trapping could not be sustained. One estimate suggested that some 10,000 were taken from the wild during the 1980s alone. This was from a species that did not breed every year and, even when it did, usually reared only one, less often two, young.

  So intense was the trapping that in 1987 a special survey was commissioned of the Hyacinth Macaw in the wild.23 The results suggested that between 2,500 and 5,000 Hyacinth Macaws remained in their native palm forests – as little as half, or perhaps only a quarter, of the birds taken for trade during the 1980s alone. This reckoning was enough to convince the world’s governments later that year immediately to ban trade in Hyacinth Macaws. With that decision, cross-border commerce in all blue macaws became illegal under international law.

  In the face of the trade ban, not only did massive demand remain – it grew. In 1998, British macaw enthusiast Tony Pittman set up a website dedicated to blue macaws and their conservation. The most frequent unsolicited email enquiry received over the 3 years to 2001 from the thousands of people visiting the website from 68 countries, was according to Pittman ‘where can I buy such birds and how much do they cost?’ The Hyacinth Macaw was already known in smuggling circles as a rare bird and the fact that commerce was now banned had the effect of pushing up prices. This meant that catching the birds was more lucrative than ever before and the trade intensified. The smuggling involved not only trappers and dealers in South America, but leading figures from the world of aviculture and parrot conservation in North America and Europe too.

  One was Tony Silva, an American from Illinois with a worldwide reputation for breeding parrots. Silva had strong views on parrot conservation and had acquired a high profile in the debate on how to save the blue macaws from extinction. He had published several large books on parrots and their conservation, including A Monograph of Endangered Parrots and A Monograph of the Macaws. His expertise in aviculture was widely regarded and his track record in parrot keeping included a spell from August 1989 to January 1992 when he was the curator of birds at the largest and most spectacular collection of parrot species anywhere in the world: Loro Parque in Tenerife.24

  Following a 4 year undercover investigation code-named ‘Operation Renegade’ by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service’s Special Operations Branch, Silva and some of his co-conspirators were arrested in 1994 for breaking the requirements of the US Endangered Species Act. Taped telephone conversations, surveillance reports and the penetration of smuggling operations by federal agents revealed how, between 1985 and 1992, Silva and his mother imported hundreds of endangered and protected birds and other wildlife into the USA.

  Among the birds involved in the illegal trafficking were shipments of Hyacinth Macaws, including one consignment of fifty and another of seventy-nine birds. With a retail value of up to US$15,000 each, a shipment of fifty could fetch three-quarters of a million dollars. Other illegally shipped items seized by the authorities included an elephant tusk and a parrot-feather headdress made by a tribe of Amazonian Indians.

  When Silva’s illegal shipments of live birds arrived in the USA, they were laundered into the avicultural world with forged documents. In order to determine the sex of the endangered parrots he imported, Silva paid a vet to undertake surgical examinations o
f the birds in a motel room in a Chicago suburb. Anaesthetised and opened with a scalpel, the birds were processed rather like the victims of latterday backstreet abortionists meeting demand for their dangerous and sordid trade away from the gaze of the authorities.

  Other rare parrots involved in Silva’s smuggling operation included the endangered and very beautiful Queen of Bavaria Conures (Guaruba guarouba),25 endangered Blue-throated Conures (Pyrrhura cruentata) and several rare amazon parrots. So confident was Silva that he could get away with his illegal trafficking that he took out sales adverts for some of the birds in American Cage Bird Magazine.

  The US authorities also suspected that Spix’s Macaws were imported as part of Silva’s smuggling operations.26 Whether such parrots were shipped by him into the United States was never proved in court, but it is possible that they were, especially considering that Silva’s operation was assisted by overseas suppliers who had also played leading roles in the saga of the Spix’s Macaw.

  One was Silva’s co-defendant Ann Koopmann from Asunción in Paraguay. She was the daughter of a former Paraguayan military officer who was himself arrested in 1987 for trafficking two young Spix’s Macaws (see chapter 7). Her role was to arrange shipments of birds caught illegally in Brazil to the USA via Mexico. She and Silva used various code words to foil eavesdropping enforcement agents; their word for Hyacinth Macaws was ‘blues’ – a rather weak disguise that did not fool the federal agents for long; if anything, it helped them.

  Another co-conspirator named in court was the Filipino aviculturist Antonio de Dios. He had obtained Spix’s Macaws and supplied various species of smuggled wildlife to Silva in the United States from his base in the Philippines. Among them were the critically endangered Red-vented Cockatoos (Cacatua haematuropygia), one of the world’s most threatened species.

  Silva’s expansive writings on rare parrots recorded among other things how the Hyacinth Macaw was ‘worth its weight in gold’; having imported more than one million dollars’ worth of these birds into the USA, he would surely know. In 1989 he also committed to print the story of a Paraguayan wildlife dealer who in 1972 received 300 young Hyacinth Macaws taken from wild nests; 99 per cent of them died. Silva also divulged details about a Brazilian trapper who, with the aid of a single assistant, took some 200–300 Hyacinth Macaws from an area that they worked for two to three years. With insights like these Silva was uniquely placed to reach the conclusion that ‘Unless all of the pressures [including illegal trade] are brought under control, this species may be unable to survive in the world to greet the twenty-first century.’

  Silva knew exactly the consequences of what he was doing, and the authorities were well aware of that fact. US Attorney Burns said, ‘It is unconscionable that a person of Mr Silva’s stature in the avicultural community would contribute, ultimately, to the illicit process that threatens these exquisite creatures with extinction.’ In 1996 he was sent to prison for seven years. It was the longest sentence ever handed down for bird smuggling. His mother got two years. Silva was also convicted of tax evasion.

  In the face of growing awareness about the plight of the blue macaws, neither increased rarity nor crackdowns by the wildlife trade enforcement authorities diminished demand for the birds in captivity. There was a ready market and many collectors would pay handsomely to own all four of the blue macaws, if they possibly could. But no matter how determined the efforts of Silva and the other traffickers, or how good their contacts among the trappers and dealers, the zoological spectacle unwittingly staged in Berlin in 1900 could not be repeated. Strive as they might in their search for a full set of all four blue macaws, the parrot El Dorado eluded the collectors. One of the four, the Glaucous Macaw, could not be found and was probably extinct. The trade had taken a tragic toll on the Hyacinth Macaw and threatened the Lear’s with imminent extinction.

  In early 1990 it was not known if the fourth and most coveted of all the blue macaws, the Spix’s, still hung on in some remote palm groves like the Lear’s or had, like the Glaucous, already been exterminated. Many believed that the Spix’s Macaw was now lost. Others were not so sure.

  5

  What Are You Looking For at the End of the World?

  By early 1990, there was serious doubt that the Spix’s Macaw existed in the wild any longer. One person most concerned to learn of its fate was Nigel Collar. One chilly morning in February, he called me into his office. I had joined the staff at the International Council for Bird Preservation to assist in the gathering campaign to save the world’s most threatened birds. As the worsening plight of the parrots had become clearer, ICBP had decided to hire someone to focus solely on that most endangered group – that person was me. The most threatened species of parrot at the top of my list was unquestionably the Spix.

  Collar’s little office was upstairs in the middle of a Victorian house called The Mount in the Cambridge suburb of Girton. Every available surface in the little room was covered with piles of papers, reports, scientific journals and notes. It looked like chaos but was in fact the background research for another work that would chart the worsening fortunes of endangered birds; this one was to be an eleven-hundred-page volume entitled Threatened Birds of the Americas. Collar said that I should know about a very important development with the Spix.

  A couple of green folders had been removed from one of his bursting filing cabinets and placed beside a pile of reports and letters on the table. The contents of the files detailed the inexorable decline of Spix’s Macaw. Collar knew the history of this enigmatic species very well, including how rumours and misinformation had made it extremely difficult to work out what was actually going on. It had been seen only a handful of times since it was first found by Spix in 1819, and was mainly known from a few moth-eaten museum specimens and a few captive birds. But a newly arrived fax had given Collar fresh cause to hesitate before declaring the Spix extinct. He suggested I read it too.

  The fax was from a distinguished Brazilian wildlife photographer, Luiz Claudio Marigo. Marigo said the rare blue parrots had been seen twice the year before in the Chapada das Mangabeiras, a range of hills in the cerrado woodlands of the Gerais, a rugged area of the interior where the states of Piauí, Goiás, Maranhão and Bahia meet. To a naturalist, the discovery of wild Spix’s Macaws would be more valuable than a gold strike, marking the chance to conserve a critically endangered species. Not only that, the new information offered the tantalising opportunity to see one of the world’s rarest creatures – a chance to experience a real eureka moment. Persistent, if unsubstantiated, rumours of birds still being offered for sale had continued to circulate. If there really were some at liberty then it was vital to find them before the trappers finished them off. If the Spix could be found, then perhaps it could be saved.

  A budget to cover expedition expenses was cobbled together and a team comprising four Brazilians and myself was formed. Marigo, who would be joined by Francisco Pontual, a passionate young conservationist also from Rio, would lead the effort. Carlos Yamashita would come too; the São Paulo-based parrot specialist who had worked on Lear’s Macaw would bring invaluable expertise. The team would also have an ornithologist called Roberto Otoch from the north-eastern city of Fortaleza. He knew the dry interior well and said that he had seen the macaws himself in the area where we planned to look.

  I busied myself in the ICBP offices unearthing all the material I could find to shed light on the possible state of the Spix’s Macaw and where we might locate it. There really wasn’t a lot of information about the species in the wild. The few reports following Spix’s discovery of it were separated by huge intervals. Over eighty years separated the first specimen from the next sighting by a scientist, and from then on it was hardly reported at all in the wild.

  One of the few more recent sightings – itself sixteen years old – had been made by the veteran ornithologist Helmut Sick.27 He and his field assistant, Dante Teixera, fleetingly saw some Spix’s Macaws in 1974 near to Formosa do Rio Prêto, a little
town in the north-west of the state of Bahia. Sick had recorded two parties of birds there, one of three macaws, the other of four, flying over buriti palms (Mauritia flexuosa). Sick and some other ornithologists believed that Spix’s Macaws, like other kinds of blue macaws, fed on palm nuts, and speculated that they specifically preferred the fruits of buriti palms.

  Sick also gleaned details from bird trappers that extended the possible range of the Spix’s Macaw to embrace the north-eastern part of the state of Goiás and the southern part of the state of Maranhão. This information, alongside a couple of other sightings from reliable ornithologists by then coming in from other parts of Piauí, extended the possible range of the Spix’s Macaw to a vast area of the dry interior of north-east Brazil.

  Collar had not been the only one to wonder where to start. The same question had occupied a man called Paul Roth, a Swiss ornithologist working in the biology department of the University of Maranhão at São Luís, Brazil. In June 1985, with a US$2,000 grant from ICBP, Roth had set off for the remote north-east on the first of five expeditions in search of Spix’s blue caatinga parrots. Even as early as 1985 enough was known to suppose that the macaw might be near to extinction and ICBP was very interested in finding out if it still hung on somewhere. Roth had tried to improve his chances of finding the birds by focusing on the three general areas where the earlier reports of Spix’s Macaws suggested they formed little clusters: one was in southern Maranhão and neighbouring parts of Piauí, the second along the banks of the middle reaches of the river São Francisco in northern Bahia, and the third in the Gerais region. The place we planned to look, the Chapada das Mangabeiras, was in this last area.