Spix's Macaw

by Tony Juniper

  The park began to succeed and its owner acquired more land. Over the years Loro Parque grew ten-fold and was transformed into an impressive modern zoo. Dotted with lush lawns planted with palms, fig trees and cacti it was immaculately maintained. Dolphins were added in 1987 and then sea lions. The marine mammals were provided with spacious pools and were highly trained to perform extraordinary acrobatic feats. A large aquarium with sharks was installed to draw in still more of the island’s millions of visitors. In 2000 the park opened one of the most remarkable zoo exhibits anywhere in the world.

  Planet Penguin is a controlled environment where several species of the birds are maintained in sub-Antarctic conditions amid the subtropical warmth of Tenerife. Snow machines producing 12 tonnes of icy particles each day create a constant fall from the roof of a dome that encloses this refrigerated world. The artificial illumination was carefully designed to mimic the daylight and wavelengths of the natural rhythms experienced by wild penguins at 60 degrees south. Clear cold seawater surrounds a rocky peninsula on which the penguins shuffle around in the snow. Below ground, a vast modern water treatment plant powered by wind generators located on the blustery coast and maintained by specialist engineers hums quietly. Inside their Antarctic bubble, Magellan Penguins charge through the water ducking and diving like porpoises. The exhibit cost US$15 million to install. Its tenants are surely the most pampered captive penguins on earth.

  Visitors are transported through Planet Penguin on moving walkways rather like the ones found in large airports. On one side the penguins swim at eye level behind glass panels that hold back the water; the other is lined with audio-visual displays in Spanish, German and English. In sombre tones, dire and well-founded pronouncements are broadcast on the plight of penguins in the wild; over-fishing, pollution, climate change, disturbance and mining. It is not only the temperatures that are chilling. These birds’ prospects in the outside world don’t look too good; the high-tech Ark is in some respects Kiessling’s premonition of the shape of things to come, and to an extent mirrors his attitude towards Loro Parque’s vast collection of parrots.

  The large-scale loss of habitat and rapid environmental change that has driven birds to extinction and many other species to the brink of it, has left Kiessling believing that there is a valuable role for breeding rare species in captivity, at least until they might be returned to restored and protected habitats. In a controlled environment they can be properly looked after, cared for, bred and sheltered from the seemingly unstoppable forces that are wiping them out in the wild.

  Planet Penguin and its other impressive attractions have truly put Loro Parque on the Tenerife tourist map, but the Foundation’s parrot collection remains Kiessling’s proudest achievement. It is fastidiously maintained by a specialist staff and impressively presented amid the dense foliage that grows in the moist warm climate found on the island’s northern coastal strip. The irreplaceable assemblage of parrots is cared for and nurtured by a team of vets and bird-breeding specialists. By 2001, Loro Parque had accumulated a collection of over 3,000 parrots from more than 300 species or subspecies. It had become the largest collection of parrot species in the world. By then nearly 25 million visitors had passed through the park and its profile on Tenerife was huge. Almost no corner of the island was without promotional literature or posters. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Kiessling’s flagship parrot for marketing his park is the charismatic Hyacinth Macaw.

  In 1998 the Loro Parque Foundation opened the La Vera Breeding Centre, a few kilometres from Kiessling’s now famous zoo, in another old banana plantation. Behind a high wall topped with razor wire and beneath the gaze of guards stationed in a watchtower, aviaries were built to house some of the world’s rarest birds. Hyacinth Macaws from Brazil, Moluccan Cockatoos (Cacatua moluccensis) from Indonesia and Red-necked Amazons from the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica were housed together with hundreds more varieties in an unparalleled collection. Remote cameras monitor movements in and out of electronically controlled steel gates; guard dogs sniff the perimeter for signs of intrusion. Careful quarantine procedures, a strict routine of cleanliness and daily showers provided by sprinklers ensure the birds stay in good health and reproduce. Fourteen staff make careful records and ensure the parrots are properly looked after. Thousands of stainless steel bowls are twice daily filled with various combinations of seeds, nectar and fruit and cleaned in an industrial-scale dishwashing machine. A tonne and half of fruit and seed is consumed there each week.

  Although most species remain on public display in Loro Parque, the majority of the parrots (2,500 out of 3,000) were moved to La Vera: all of them were placed under the control of the Loro Parque Foundation. Kiessling established the Foundation in 1994 to help fund projects to save endangered species in the wild. He saw the establishment of the Foundation as a way of harnessing the commercial success of Loro Parque to support conservation. The establishment of the Foundation marked Kiessling’s transition from entrepreneur and parrot expert to an advocate for environmental causes and sponsor of projects to save some of the world’s rarest birds in their forest homes.

  Between 800 and 850 young parrots were bred at the La Vera centre each year between 1998 and 2000. In 2001 the number of captive-bred parrots leapt to 1,100. The top priority of the centre is to maintain its captive population and birds are put aside for that purpose. Not only does this ensure the long-term future of the Foundation’s parrots, but provides a resource for researchers studying the birds in captivity. All of the young parrots are recorded and tagged by the local wildlife authorities. Some are designated to join official collaborative breeding programmes and some are exchanged with other centres, all in closely controlled programmes overseen by the Association of European Zoos and Aquaria. Other young parrots born at La Vera are offered for sale to generate money to fund the Foundation’s conservation programmes. In 1999 the equivalent of about US$140,000 was raised in this way.

  The rare jewel in the midst of the Loro Parque Foundation’s colourful menagerie had for years been some Spix’s Macaws. Wolfgang Kiessling first added this species to his collection in 1985, following the offer of two birds from an international bird dealer based in Switzerland. It was relatively easy to take delivery of rare parrots in Spanish-administered Tenerife during the mid-1980s and the birds came with paperwork recognised as legal by the Swiss authorities. Although the export from Brazil had been against the laws of that country, the import of the parrots into territory controlled by Spain had violated no domestic legislation as it wasn’t then a signatory nation of CITES.

  Kiessling rationalised the purchase on the grounds that it was best that he take them into his well-run facility. So two Spix’s were installed. He kept them out of public view, not wishing the birds to be exposed to any disturbance that might reduce their potential to breed.

  Kiessling wasn’t the only successful businessman to have bought these most sought-after of parrots and to acknowledge the fact in public. The June 1983 edition of Singapore Aviculture had carried some pictures of Spix’s Macaws. They showed a family group of four held in the country by Terrance Loh, one of Singapore’s main bird traders. Singapore had become a major transit point for rare wildlife, and it was not surprising that the Spix’s had turned up there. The article claimed, improbably, that the baby birds had been captive-bred. When the birds had arrived in Singapore was not clear, but Loh had them for between six and nine months before they were sold on, apparently for US$60,000.

  From Singapore, Loh said that the birds were shipped to their new owner, Antonio de Dios, a Filipino businessman.38 De Dios had a trucking and heavy machinery business, but had also built up a commercial bird-breeding operation. He had made millions, including by importing heavy equipment for the Filipino government departments that had assisted in the near-total clearance of the dense tropical rainforests that once clothed the Philippines. The Birds International, Inc. exotic bird farm is located off a highway on the outskirts of Quezon City, the sister sprawl of Man
ila. So systematic was his approach that the centre had become known as the ‘parrot factory’. Surrounded by high walls and patrolled by uniformed security guards, he too had a priceless collection of parrots. He had kept animals for most of his life and it had taken him decades to build up a collection that by 2000 included 6,000 parrots from 160 species. Unlike Wolfgang Kiessling, de Dios’s collection had from the start been geared to commercial breeding rather than tourism and conservation.

  De Dios specialised in parrot rearing but also bred a wide range of other species including cranes, hornbills and toucans. He was skilled and successful. The four Spix’s Macaws were at least in a situation where they would be given every encouragement to reproduce.

  Two more Spix’s were in the possession of Wolf Brehm, the German owner of Vogelpark Walsrode, a large bird garden near Hamburg. Brehm also owned another bird centre in the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. One of the Walsrode macaws was on loan from George Smith, an English aviculturist and vet. Smith said that he had bought the bird in 1975 for £350. Before he got the macaw it had been crippled as a result of being tethered by the leg. He thought it was a male but had no partner for it. In 1980 he lent it to Brehm to see if it would pair up with his single bird. Another single Spix languished at the Naples Zoo in Italy. It had been there for years and was probably past or near the end of its reproductive life. It had reportedly arrived in Naples in 1954 and was still alive in the mid-1980s making it the longest-lived Spix’s Macaw known in captivity. The date of its death is unknown to the author (but occured before 1990). This may have been the bird supplied by Alvaro Carvalhães (see page 33).

  In 1988, by the time it was thought the last wild ones had been caught, there were very few Spix’s Macaws acknowledged in captivity. De Dios had achieved a breakthrough in managing to breed from his birds and there were seven in residence at his Birds International aviaries in the Philippines. There were two in Tenerife, two with Walsrode and one in Naples. Thus the known captive population outside Brazil was not known to be more than twelve.

  On top of these, rumours circulated about as many as nineteen others. Unconfirmed reports suggested there were two in Majorca where the birds were rumoured to be with a German living in Alcudia. Two more were said to be in Northern Ireland where they resided in a private collection in County Antrim. Others were possibly in Germany, Gran Canaria, South Africa, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. One more was claimed to have been kept by a leading American country and western music singer. Others were said to have been owned by Imelda Marcos, wife of the infamous Filipino leader. Another pair were apparently exported to Yugoslavia, sent there during the 1970s as an official gift from the Government of Brazil to President Tito. Tito, the wartime Partisan leader who later became Head of State, had a private zoo on the Adriatic island of Brioni and that is where the two Spix’s were claimed to have been sent. The fate of Tito’s parrots, if they existed, was unknown: in any event, by 1987 they were presumed dead. On top of all these rumours, there were new whispers that some of these special macaws were being kept in Switzerland.

  The situation was equally uncertain inside Brazil. Because of the official restrictions imposed on the keeping in captivity of native wildlife and the commercialisation of rare species, only a few private bird keepers designated by the Brazilian Government as ‘scientific breeders’ were allowed to keep them and therefore openly declare the fact. One such breeder was Carlos Keller, a private bird keeper and the director of his own facility, the Tropicus Breeding Centre. Although Keller did not have Spix’s Macaws himself, his connections with aviculturalists and Brazilian bird-keeping circles enabled him in the late 1980s to put together an estimate of the birds held in captivity in the country.

  In all, Keller estimated that there were up to fourteen but more likely eleven in captivity in Brazil. The five in the São Paulo Zoo were well known. All had been obtained through the confiscation of illegal wild-caught birds, including the two picked up from the raid in Paraguay. The remaining six to nine were with private owners, many of whom preferred not to be identified lest they risk confiscation of their irreplaceable charges.

  Several single birds kept at secret locations were in the hands of anonymous keepers. One was kept by a man Keller believed to be a competent breeder who could not locate a mate for his bird. Another was kept by a collector in Piauí. This macaw had been procured directly from the dealer in Petrolina and was thought to be a female. She was not expertly looked after and was being fed rice and bean scraps from the table. Keller had tried to obtain the lone macaw from its wealthy owner so that it could be paired and bred. The man wouldn’t part with it, however, and since he was not only wealthy but politically powerful, there was no prospect of an official confiscation. If this bird was going anywhere, Keller thought it likely that it would join the international trade via the bird dealers who knew of its existence and had repeatedly tried to obtain it. Keller felt that their persuasive powers were stronger than his.

  Two more birds were in another private São Paulo collection. They were owned by a breeder called Cardoso. Cardoso had the largest collection of parrots in Brazil; his birds were well cared for and he had indicated to Keller that he was interested in joining a captive-breeding programme to save the Spix’s Macaw. The remaining two were with another successful parrot breeder, Nelson Kawall. He was quite famous among Brazilian bird keepers, not least because of his high-profile sponsorship of a leading brand of birdseed.

  Keller had identified several other accomplished aviculturists who could breed Spix’s Macaws if they had them. One was Mauricio dos Santos, who had a bird-breeding centre in Recife in the north-east. Dos Santos was another self-made businessman with the financial means to purchase birds like Spix’s Macaws. His personal wealth was accumulated from a successful haulage business. He was near to the smuggling routes, and Keller had predicted that he would before long acquire Spix’s Macaws. In 1988 he did. It was the bird in the Polaroid photo, the last female from the last pair taken from in the Melância Creek during the Christmas holidays of 1987 – the penultimate wild Spix.

  During a visit to Brazil in 1983 George Smith claimed to have seen, over the course of what he described as ‘a leisurely two-day period’, twelve Spix’s Macaws. All were tame, and he believed they had been taken from wild nests for rearing in captivity. Three were in São Paulo Zoo and the remainder in private hands. None of them had been sexed, and therefore could not be paired for certain with partners of the opposite sex, and none in Smith’s opinion was in a suitable breeding aviary. He concluded that ‘the main, often the sole, incentive for keeping the collection was that all the animals were difficult to obtain and expensive to buy. The marmosets, and the birds, were but objects for ostentatious display.’ Aside from the motives attributed to the bird keepers by Smith (who had kept one himself), the more significant information was about the numbers held in captivity at that time. Smith claimed twelve compared to Keller’s eleven estimated four years later. The estimates made by these two insiders were remarkably close and highlighted just how desperately serious the situation had become.

  Scattered across four continents, the remaining Spix’s Macaws could not have been more far flung from the little creek-side woodlands where they had been brought into being by the very special conditions found there. Unnoticed by the world, they had been caught, transported and sold to the very point of extinction. Now their future depended on people who had never met one another, had no common plan to save the species and who did not even speak the same language or share the same culture. From celebrities and millionaires to heads of state and private bird collectors, the one thing that bound them together was their privilege: all owned the rarest of the rare.

  Thus by mid-1987 there were a maximum of twenty-four Spix’s Macaws in the world that could possibly be scraped together to take part in a coordinated captive-breeding programme. That figure was a top-of-the-range estimate. Scattered across the face of the earth, at least half, and probably the majori
ty of these were outside Brazil and as far as the Brazilian Government was concerned most were illegally held. Some of those inside Brazil were kept in secret and were also illegal. On top of that, conservationists in Brazil who had spoken out against the trade in Spix’s Macaws had received death threats. In that country, such intimidation was not taken lightly.

  This was the shaky launch-pad from which an emergency rescue plan for the world’s rarest bird began to take shape.

  8

  The Rarest Bird in the World

  Even before the final confirmation in 1990 that Spix’s Macaw had reached the precipice of extinction in the wild, proposals for a last-minute rescue plan were being frantically discussed by the world’s leading conservation agencies. It had been widely recognised since 1986 that the most urgent priority was to set up a proper captive-breeding programme. This would act as insurance against the dreadful possibility that this most exquisite of birds could become extinct in the wild.

  Breeding wild animals in captivity is not a new idea and this job might have appeared fairly straightforward. People have after all bred animals in captivity for thousands of years; to provide food, hunt game, for companionship and transport. Others had been bred for ornamental or decorative purposes. During the twentieth century, people had also developed expertise in breeding animals and birds to save them from extinction. By the 1980s there was a growing track record of success and lots of know-how on the best methods available.

  The idea of conservation breeding is not to be selective in a genetic sense but instead inclusive. The retention of genetic diversity is vitally important. Careful plans must be laid to ensure that all of the genetic diversity in small captive populations of endangered creatures is passed through to future generations while simultaneously expanding numbers. To be avoided wherever possible is repeated reproduction between individuals related to one another. The results of such inbreeding can be manifest in a host of genetic disorders that may ultimately lead to extinction of the captive population.