by Tony Juniper
The Sheikh had ample funds to expend on his hobby. At a New York auction a few years earlier he had bought John James Audubon’s 1850s Birds of America for five million dollars. He also had an extensive collection of extinct birds. In addition to the skins of long-vanished parrots, he had bought a stuffed Great Auk and bones of now defunct moa birds that once lived in New Zealand.46
On the wall of his luxury central London apartment hangs a picture of the Sheikh. The enormous colour photograph shows him seated in his sumptuous library of unique leather-bound natural history and bird books. Open on his lap is a rare volume on the birds of Brazil, ‘the only copy I have ever seen.’ Flying past his leather chair is a bright blue Spix’s Macaw, its flowing plumes conjuring an unsurpassable image of grace. The photo was taken about a year after he took delivery of the birds.
Sheikh Al-Thani’s motives for owning these parrots are clearly mixed. In addition to the obvious pleasure he takes from having the very rarest and most exclusive ornithological treasures, he says his ‘dream is that one day these birds will go back’; but he also quickly adds that this will be ‘extremely difficult’. He sees the problems as not least linked to the Brazilian Government’s lack of interest and lack of reliability. Declaring that ‘Brazilian bird protection is a joke,’ he casually reveals a recent offer made to him of fifty Hyacinth Macaw chicks taken from the wild. Although he laments that Hyacinth Macaws are ‘well on their way to being extinct,’ he evidently sees no contradiction between that thought and his personal ownership of the rarest blue macaws. He also showed no sense of irony when he suggested that those smuggling rare parrots should face ‘the stiffest penalties’.
The Sheikh’s purchase of the four Spix’s was different from that made by Roland Messer. Unlike the transfer between owners inside Switzerland, the movement of the birds from the Philippines to Qatar was subject to international wildlife trade controls and required a CITES permit for it to be legal. Staff at the CITES headquarters in Geneva were shown the proposed export permit by the Philippines authorities. The wildlife trade law experts were not happy about it, and they told the Philippines officials why.
Jim Armstrong is a robust Australian who had been involved with CITES for years and knew the treaty inside out. Since 1996 he had worked at the organisation’s international headquarters in Geneva. He recalled, ‘We were given a copy of the export permit from the Philippines. Four birds were on the permit. We have not seen the studbook since 1994 so didn’t know what the situation was in captivity.’ One reason why Armstrong and other interested parties had not seen the Spix’s Macaw studbook was because it had not been published.47 This was a breach of international standards for studbooks and created a serious impediment to Armstrong and his team’s efforts to uphold international wildlife trade laws. Under CITES rules, captive breeding can’t be claimed unless it is clear that the origin of the parental breeding stock was legal. The studbook was vital for understanding which birds were involved and what their legal status was. ‘Our concern was that the Philippine Government was responding to information provided by the exporter, de Dios,’ said Armstrong. He asked the Philippines CITES authorities to clarify why they regarded the birds as captive-bred on the export permit given the origin of the parents. ‘We never received an answer to that.’
Another issue concerned the purpose of the transfer. Endangered species protected under CITES rules should not be traded for primarily commercial purposes. Armstrong argued that if de Dios was getting compensated for his troubles by receiving a large sum of money then the transfer was a commercial transaction. Armstrong took the view that the transfer did not comply with CITES requirements, but the Philippines Government issued the permit anyway.
(This transfer was not the only controversial sale that de Dios clinched. By 2000 he had agents working for him to sell his rare Philippines-bred parrots to collectors worldwide. One such sale involved six Hyacinth Macaws transferred to the UK in 1998, supposedly for breeding purposes. The British authorities, who understood that the parrots would be put into a captive-breeding programme, granted an import licence. They weren’t; instead they were split up and sold by a company called ‘Bobs British Bred Birds’ to individual collectors. When their true fate came to light, they were seized under the UK’s Control of Endangered Species Regulations.)
Although there was no legal remedy, not least because Qatar had not signed CITES and was not therefore bound by its provisions, the correspondence between CITES headquarters and the Philippines authorities on the transfer to the Sheikh were copied to the Brazilian Government. They received all the relevant details in advance of the next meeting of the Recovery Committee that would be held on 19 and 20 February 2001 in the capital Brasília. At this meeting, the shipment of the macaws to Qatar was to prove a turning point. With the loss of the last Spix and the recent sales, unauthorised by the committee, the atmosphere was very different from the optimistic tone in Houston in September 1999.
The twenty-odd members of the Committee and their advisors gathered in a small room at the upmarket National Hotel in downtown Brasília, a venue often used for government functions. Seated around a long U-shaped table beneath the harsh glare of strip lights, an acrimonious meeting began.
Yves de Soye from the Loro Parque Foundation was there. ‘Everyone knew it was going to be a crucial meeting. We knew from the start that Antonio de Dios was not participating. He sent a man called Friedrich Janeczek as his representative.’ Janeczek was a Czech vet living in Germany. He had been acting as Antonio de Dios’s representative and had recently offered Philippine-bred Spix’s Macaws for sale in the United States and in Europe on de Dios’s behalf, a disclosure that further damaged the Filipino breeder’s credibility as an honest and committed participant in the recovery effort.
Janeczek put two proposals on the table. The first was that the Sheikh, as a new owner, should be invited to join the Committee without any conditions. The other was that a new approach be taken towards the captive breeding of Spix’s Macaws. This would involve setting up independent breeding centres around the world where competent aviculturists would have full charge of the birds. The idea was that such breeders would cooperate with one another but not be bound by any committee.
The Brazilians exploded. They had not been consulted about the transfer of birds to the Sheikh and further relocations would certainly reduce even the limited control they now had. They and most other members believed that the transport of birds to Qatar had violated the agreement de Dios had signed with the Brazilian Government. Kiessling argued that if such a proposal were adopted it would allow holders to sell birds to breeding centres of their choice, thereby generating huge financial incentives. His view was that if the Committee really was about saving an endangered species rather than operating as a rare parrot laundering service, then surely the studbook would be better run on the basis of central genetic control rather than as a business.
Janeczek persisted. He set out the vision of Antonio de Dios whereby in ten years time there would be a proposed ten breeding centres around the world with at least four pairs of Spix’s Macaws each. Ten times four pairs is eighty birds bred in captivity. The macaws would be supplied to independent owners who would be granted the right to own the parrots on the strength of criteria set out by the breeders. Janeczek confirmed that de Dios had used his own criteria in selecting the Sheikh because he knew the Committee wouldn’t accept a proposed transfer. Since the value of Spix’s Macaws was at least US$25,000 to US$50,000 per head (possibly more depending on the buyer’s purse), Janeczek’s proposal would involve the transfer of at least US$2 million dollars-worth of parrots. In other words, big business.
De Dios’s vision was also said to include the establishment of ten birds in the wild in ten years’ time. But all-important matters about what the legal implications of this would be, how the birds would be selected, paid for, released and monitored, were left unspecified. And it must be stressed that at this stage there was still no agreed plan fo
r the release of the five birds that had been earmarked for return to Brazil back at the Houston meeting in 1999. Certainly if there was to be a prospect of success from this attempt, then clear plans would be needed for the release methods as well as clear and agreed plans for follow-up releases of additional captive-bred birds in future years. (Antonio de Dios was repeatedly contacted by the author and invited to contribute his views and reactions to these points, but did not respond.)
To the dismay of many committee members, the studbook holder, Natasha Schischakin, supported Janeczek and spoke up in favour of the Sheikh, agreeing that he should be invited to join the Committee without conditions. Schischakin had already been to visit his aviaries in Qatar and showed a video of the royal bird-keeping facilities.
One motive for her efforts on the Sheikh’s behalf was quite transparent. He was extremely rich and had previously registered an interest in helping the recovery effort. He had, for example, considered buying the land that included the Melância Creek so that it could be properly conserved. There was clearly the possibility that he might bankroll the Recovery Committee and its future projects. This would diminish the Brazilian’s reliance on Loro Parque’s funding and help secure the alternative sources of financial backing that Schischakin saw as ‘critical to the independence of the program.’ Her view was that the ‘control’ sought by Kiessling over the Committee had become ‘an incredibly serious problem’ to the extent that the ‘holders are at a point where they refuse to be in the same room with him.’ As she saw it, a different source of money could solve that problem. These comments of hers were included in a letter to the head of Houston Zoo in June 2001 in which she responded to other views of the recovery programme. (She too was repeatedly contacted by the author but would not directly discuss her role in the transfer of birds to Qatar.)
She had all the studbook data and was in a strong position to recommend which birds would make the best genetic choices to ship to the Sheikh. The four birds selected were indeed taken on the basis of a detailed kinship evaluation made possible only with the studbook. Schischakin was thus a pivotal figure, with unusually close control of the vital data necessary to run the breeding programme. That she was now working behind the scenes to arrange an unauthorised transfer was a big problem. She was also now in direct conflict with Kiessling and his Loro Parque colleagues.
Loro Parque claimed that the role Schischakin had adopted was quite inappropriate. ‘Her function was meant to be as mediator and coordinator of the captive-breeding working group,’ said Yves de Soye. ‘She should be gathering data and presenting it to the Committee so that it can take good decisions. Her job is to provide technical contributions and expertise where needed and leave the political work to the Committee and the Brazilian Government. That is unfortunately not how she has played it.’
She in turn implied that the Loro Parque position on the transfer to the Sheikh was based on sour grapes because de Dios had refused in 1999 to transfer two of his birds to Loro Parque for public display and educational purposes in exchange for a donation of US$50,000. This deal was proposed through official channels in the Committee after de Dios had told its members that he expected compensation for his costs in keeping so many Spix’s Macaws at his facilities.
Kiessling then pointed out his frustrations at unfulfilled commitments made by the studbook keeper at previous meetings. There was still no published studbook that complied with internationally agreed standards. The husbandry guide, seen as essential as long ago as the first Tenerife agreement in 1988 – and for which she had accepted responsibility – had not been compiled either. It was thus still the case that none of the experience about breeding the birds in captivity and how to look after them had been collated or published. There was still no vital DNA testing to assess the actual relatedness between the captive birds as the Fort Lauderdale meeting had agreed seven years ago would be done by the studbook holder.
The authorities in London responsible for the approval and coordination of international studbooks say that the lack of information available about the Spix’s Macaw is an almost unique situation. Repeated commitments were made by the studbook keeper to supply relevant data but nothing ever materialised over seven years. The Status Survey and Conservation Action Plan for the world’s parrots published by leading conservation agencies in 2000 makes the understatement that ‘coordination among parties has not been entirely transparent.’
Other clashes broke out in the Brasília meeting. Messer for example argued with Brazilian scientists over the timing and desirability of providing birds for release into the Melância Creek. With raised voices, bad tempers, accusations and counter-accusations, the meeting deteriorated. The detached scientific discussions that were desperately needed to wrest a critically endangered species from the jaws of extinction did not take place. Instead there was an enormous row.
The day before the meeting started the Brazilian Government had decided that there were two choices: either come up with some new agreement that addressed the ownership question, or dissolve the Committee. With Schischakin’s endorsement of the transfer of birds from de Dios to Sheikh Al-Thani, the Brazilian Government representatives grew furious, and they went for the second option. On 20 February 2001 – the second day of the special meeting – the group established with so much pain and effort twelve years before met for the last time. There was no formal revocation of the Brazilian law that established the Recovery Committee, but it was suspended with a view to dissolving or restructuring it later. This bodyblow, perhaps the deathblow, for Spix’s Macaw was the result of the disastrous clash of human styles, egos, pride and vested interests.
For more than a decade the owners of Spix’s Macaws had been allowed to keep their parrots on the condition that they collaborate with the Brazilian-led recovery attempt. During that time, their participation had enabled the owners to exchange birds to ensure the genetic strength of their stock. But, in the end, the sales of the birds showed that some of the owners were unable to put their own interests and ideas to one side and collaborate as part of a wider rescue team.
The collapse of the Committee came at a critical moment. For the first time in ten years, the captive population had declined. With the disappearance of five Swiss held birds to an unknown location and four more to the Sheikh, whose willingness or unwillingness to fully collaborate was still unpredictable, nine had been removed from the sixty-three ‘controlled’ by the Committee at the start of 2001. And most of the remaining fifty-four were related to one another. On top of that, only four of these birds were ones taken from the wild. Just four individuals who had felt the heat of the caatinga, tasted wild food or faced the fear of predation. And at least two – if not all four of these – had departed from their natural home in the creeks as infants.
One of the four was with Messer, an old macaw that could not be expected to live much longer. Another was in Mauricio dos Santos’s aviaries in Recife, Brazil. This was one of the two young males seized by the authorities in Paraguay in 1987. The other two were in Tenerife with Kiessling. One was the old original female at São Paulo caught in 1976; her reproductive abilities would now be in decline. Her partner was the brother of the other male bird taken from the last nest in the Melância Creek in 1987, another offspring of the last pair, who were both now dead. All the others had been bred in captivity.
Juan Villalba-Macias, the TRAFFIC official who seized the baby Spix’s in Paraguay back in 1987, and who was one of the people behind early efforts to get the Committee going, witnessed the last days of the Committee. ‘All that has happened has been really frustrating,’ he said. ‘On top of the extinction of the Spix in the wild is the fact that the majority of the birds in captivity are in the hands of traffickers, for example Messer, people who give priority to money, like de Dios, or “rare stamp collectors” like Sheikh Al-Thani.’ He added that it was ‘A sombre outlook … the situation of the species is the chronicle of an extinction foretold.’
11
An Extinction Foretold?
The closed-circuit TV monitor at the Loro Parque Foundation’s La Vera breeding facility showed live coverage of a pair of contented Spix’s Macaws in their nest box. Pictures were transmitted via a tiny camera in the birds’ nest to the screen in the neat little offices next door where the staff maintained a constant watch. The keepers’ dream in the spring of 2001 was that someday soon they would arrive at work to find an egg.
On screen the blue parrots rolled on their backs in the clean straw placed in the nest box. They playfully tussled with one another, hooking their black bills together for a tug of war, pulling each other’s long tails or grappling with their feet while laid on their sides. The two parrots looked to be in peak condition: they had glossy bright plumage and an alert and sharp disposition. They were evidently happy in one another’s company.
The male bird was one of the two baby macaws seized during the sting operation in Paraguay fourteen years before. His partner had come with him from São Paulo Zoo. She was another wild-caught bird and thus the pair comprised half the wild-caught birds that remained. Despite her age, the couple showed signs that they might procreate.
The aviary was spacious and planted with trees and shrubs, and offered a choice of six different nest boxes in a variety of shapes, sizes and positions. The parrots were fed a carefully controlled diet and subject to constant scrutiny to ensure that they were in good health. Other macaws, including playful young Hyacinths, croaked and squawked nearby.
The Hyacinths were housed in a mixed flock so as to develop their social skills. One mischievous young individual, perhaps the emotional equivalent of a human teenager, hung by his beak from the tip of the tail of a beautiful big Green-winged Macaw. The angry Green-winged hung from the aviary roof by one foot. He lunged at the young parrot that taunted him, but could not reach. The Hyacinth croaked in delight as the red and green bird struggled, and failed, to dislodge him.