"This bird was like a Rembrandt or a Picasso. Yet unlike a painting by a great master, this
bird was a temporary treasure. One day
he would day, his value would be gone, and another would be demanded to replace
him.”
As a member of the international Council for Bird
Preservation, Tony Juniper was charged with leading efforts to save the most
endangered group of birds – the parrots.
Among his top priorities were the three living species f blue
macaws. Highest among them was the
parrot that many people considered the rarest species of bird on the planet –
Spix’s macaw.
Spix’s macaw, named after the nineteenth century Bavarian
scientist who collected the first specimen, is (or was) found only in the
caatinga forests of eastern Brazil. Not
much of the story takes place there, however, because that’s not where the
birds are anymore. Almost all of the
wild birds had been captured and sold, scattered across several countries on
several continents, most in the possession of private breeders or
collectors. I saw “almost all” because
one lone male remained, a wily, cagey remnant of a species that once flew
proudly over the caatinga.
Spix’s Macaw: The Race
to Save the World’s Rarest Bird is actually two stories. One is the story of the lone macaw. The other is the story of those birds
scattered across the globe, the people who own them, and the efforts of a few
conservationists to bring them all together to save the species.
Owning a Spix’s macaw is, in the case of almost all of the
owners, something that began with an illegal act. Birds were illegally captured and smuggled
out of Brazil, with huge sums of money trading hands. The author makes his position plain that he
doesn’t like it. There is also a
realization that that is where the macaws are now and, with full legal
confiscation being unlikely (as well as potentially unwise, seeing as no one
knew how many Spix’s macaws were also being held in unknown hands), that these
were people who would need to work conservation organizations and governments
to save the parrot. In the end, a full
amnesty was declared, and efforts were made to bring all of the parrot-owning
parties together to form a last-ditch captive breeding program to save the
species.
It’s easier said than done.
Most of the private owners who held Spix’s macaws had paid vast sums for
their birds and were hesitant, to say the least, to let their birds in the
hands of other people, especially rival collectors. There was a fair deal of mistrust over who
was in control over the program. The
Brazilian government, which claimed ownership – but not possession – of the
birds? Loro Parque, the Spanish zoo
which was bankrolling the recovery program, including the field conservation
project? Or the owners of the individual
birds, who were doing the actual breeding?
Some of the later apparently never found themselves bond by the
agreements they made either to the government or the zoos and sold their birds
or traded them as they would.
Spix’s Macaw
raises interesting questions about private ownership and how it can contribute
to, or detract from, conservation efforts.
It doesn’t take the lazy approach and paint those who seek to possess
Spix’s macaws simply as villains, but as the complicated characters that they
are. At the end of the book, he has an
exchange with one former owner, one who actually served some prison time for
bird smuggling. This man was in tears –
tears – of frustration because he felt that he was on the course of action
which would have saved these macaws from extinction, and felt thwarted by
government rules and regulations.
Besides the story of Spix’s macaw and the people trying to
save it, Juniper’s book offers a brief but interesting history of humanity’s
relationship with parrots. It also provides
a great overview of studbooks and species survival plans in zoos, describing
how they have been used to save species from extinction.
Mostly, however, it’s the story of a blue
parrot, probably unknown to the vast majority of world, but ravenously coveted
by the small number who do know of it.
How the fate of Spix’s macaw rests at the end of the book is a secret I
won’t spoil. What happens next is yet
to be seen…
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