- A successful program to reintroduce the Spix’s macaw, a bird declared extinct in the wild, back into its native habitat has been thrown into uncertainty over a split between the two key institutions behind it.
- ICMBio, Brazil’s federal agency responsible for managing biodiversity, has refused to renew an agreement with the ACTP, the German organization running the program with birds from its captive flock.
- ICMBio alleges the ACTP has engaged in commercial transactions of Spix’s macaws by transferring some to a private zoo in India, but the ACTP insists there was no sale and it is merely relocating to better facilities in India.
- For its part, the ACTP accuses ICMBio of politicking and undermining the reintroduction program; the split has put the future of the program into doubt, given there aren’t currently enough captive birds outside the ACTP’s flock to supply the program over the long term.
This is the second in a two-part report about the reintroduction of the Spix’s macaw, a bird declared extinct in the wild, and the uncertain future of its return. Read Part One here.
RIO DE JANEIRO — In 2022, the Spix’s macaw, one of the world’s most threatened parrots, started being reintroduced into Brazil’s semiarid Caatinga biome. The species, Cyanopsitta spixii, disappeared from its native habitat in 2000, when the last known wild Spix’s died.
The reintroduction project in Curaçá municipality, Bahia state, was coordinated by two institutions: the Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots (ACTP), a German breeding facility that currently houses most of the Spix’s macaws left on Earth; and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio), the Brazilian government agency responsible for managing protected areas and biodiversity.
The first year of the reintroduction showed remarkable success, with a good number of the 20 released Spix’s surviving and staying together in the wild, and couples breeding and hatching the first wild-born chicks in decades. But in May 2024, ICMBio announced that it would not be renewing its technical cooperation agreement, or TCA, with the ATCP, which ended in June.
The move came as a shock to the conservationists involved in the reintroduction, and threw the future of the promising program into doubt.
“[I’m] really perplexed by the decision of Brazilian authorities to no longer renew the agreement with ACTP. There is no biological reason for that decision,” says Thomas White from the Puerto Rican Parrot Recovery Project, and a member of the advisory group for the reintroduction of the Spix’s macaw since 2012. “You have a reintroduction that is in the critical first stages. It is showing phenomenal historic unprecedented success, and to completely change the management of it at this point is very counterintuitive and very counterproductive.”
Commercial or not?
There was, as White points out, no biological reason to end the agreement. The decision was an administrative one. According to ICMBio, the key factor was “the commercial transactions involving Spix’s macaws carried out by the ACTP.”
Mongabay and others have previously reported on the controversies surrounding the ACTP and its founder, Martin Guth. The institution has been accused of a lack of transparency in how it conducts its operations, and also of using questionable methods to acquire some of its birds, especially in regard to two imperial amazons (Amazona imperialis) and 10 red-necked amazons (Amazona arausiaca) obtained from Dominica in 2018.
In this case, the “commercial transactions” cited by ICMBio center on the transfer in 2023 of 26 Spix’s macaws and four Lear’s macaws (Anodorhynchus leari) — another Brazil-endemic species and listed as endangered — to a private zoo in India, Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (GZRRC).
Spix’s are listed as Appendix I species in CITES, the global convention on the international wildlife trade, which means its trade is allowed only under special circumstances.
Critics say the transfer of the birds from Germany to India didn’t meet that criteria. Twenty organizations involved in wildlife conservation, animal welfare and antitrafficking efforts, including the World Parrot Trust, signed a letter condemning the act (and the ACTP’s transfer of another 50 Spix’s macaws to facilities in Belgium, Denmark and Slovakia), as well as what they called poor implementation by the European Union of wildlife trade regulations. Although German authorities deemed the transaction to be noncommercial, according to the letter, the “German breeding facility apparently received significant amounts of money for transferring captive-bred birds to private persons and zoos.”
ICMBio told Mongabay that Brazil stands “firmly against the trade of this species, even with justifications of funding conservation actions. The trade of Spix’s macaws is detrimental to the conservation of the species and favors private interests to the detriment of the protection of the public good.”
The ACTP has denied it sold the birds to the Indian facility. In a statement issued ahead of last November’s CITES meeting, it said that “this operation is not a commercial transaction, and no Spix’s Macaw or any other bird was sold.” The transfer, according to the document, was necessary to expand the space to manage the birds, promote the project to other parts of the world, and support the reintroduction program.
“There was no transfer of ownership of the animals to any other organization, and the birds and their offspring remain under the ownership of ACTP,” it added.
This is echoed by Cromwell Purchase, ACTP’s scientific and field projects coordinator, who is overseeing the Spix’s macaw reintroduction in the Caatinga.
“Martin is slowly but surely moving his facility to India,” Purchase tells Mongabay. “He’s got a leased piece of land — a 99-year lease with Greens. On that land, Greens has built state-of-the-art facilities, even better than the facilities he has in Germany.
“The move is basically just ACTP to ACTP,” he adds.
Cromwell says the CITES permits under which the birds were transferred “are extremely strict. On the permits it is written that the birds are specifically not for commercial trade. They are specifically for the Spix’s macaw program. So it’s not like the place in India can do anything with those birds other than [use them] for the program.”
He adds that while the German facility houses specimens that legally belong to the Brazilian government, all of the birds moved to India are owned by the ACTP. “ACTP does not need ICMBio’s permission to move their birds,” he says.
‘Trouble and politics’
Purchase accuses ICMBio of using the claim that the transfer was commercial to go after the ACTP at the CITES meeting. He says the agency is guilty of stalling the project, neglecting to act in a timely manner in key moments of the reintroduction — delaying, for instance, the transfer of more Spix’s macaws to Brazil from Europe. He alleges ulterior motives among some officials toward the central role played in the reintroduction by the ACTP, which to date has paid for most of the program, and says ICMBio’s National Center for Wild Bird Research and Conservation (CEMAVE) in particular has “only made trouble and created politics.”
Ugo Vercillo, director of Blue Sky Caatinga, a company involved in the program by restoring the ecosystems in which the birds are released, adds that a total of 120 Spix’s macaws should have been imported at this point — more than double the 52 brought over from Germany so far — and that 60 should already have been released.
ICMBio denies the allegations, saying “there is no animosity on the part of ICMBio towards foreign and private institutions participating in the project.” What it does have, it says, are “reservations regarding certain actions of the ACTP.”
The agency also denies undermining the reintroduction program, saying it has always supported it: “We have fulfilled the terms of the Technical Cooperation Agreement to the best of our institutional capabilities. We have never hindered the entry of Spix’s macaws into Brazil.” ICMBio also says it recently approved the transfer of 42 Spix’s macaws from the ACTP to Brazil. But according to Purchase, the approval came too late for a reintroduction to be carried out this year.
As things stand, however, the arrival of these macaws in the Caatinga has become a hazy matter. In a statement to the Brazilian news site ((o))eco, the ACTP’s Martin Guth said that “given the uncertain future of the [Spix’s macaw conservation] project, we will not risk the lives of more birds without a clear understanding of the Brazilian government’s position on their reintroduction.”
The end of the agreement doesn’t prevent the ACTP from continuing with the reintroduction, but it does make things more complicated. Under the agreement, ICMBio was responsible for technical support in monitoring the birds and for bureaucratic support for the project as a whole, while the ACTP was tasked with building and managing the facilities to breed, train and release the birds within the species’ historical range. With ICMBio now out of the picture, the ACTP still has other Brazilian partners willing to provide support. Blue Sky Caatinga was recently put in charge of managing the facilities in Curaçá.
“[On June 10], the ordinance transferring the management of the center from ICMBio to Blue Sky was published,” Vercillo tells Mongabay. “So Blue Sky will start to have veterinarians, hire a team, all of that.”
ICMBio is also not stepping away from conservation action; it will continue managing two protected areas established in 2018 specifically to safeguard future wild populations of Spix’s macaws. It will also monitor the birds outside of the grounds where the ACTP still conducts its operations.
A hazy future
There are about 80 Spix’s macaws currently in Brazil, split between the population reintroduced to the Caatinga, the ACTP-run facilities at Curaçá, and São Paulo Zoo (SPZ). The latter currently holds 27 of the birds, recently transferred from another institution at CEMAVE’s request and held in a newly built conservation center just for the species.
“We fully intend to participate in the reintroduction program,” Fernanda Vaz Guida, the biologist responsible for SPZ’s bird sector, tells Mongabay. The zoo has seen three couples form among its Spix’s macaws, and Guida says she hopes they’ll start breeding very soon. The zoo’s goal is to eventually reach 10 breeding pairs to keep growing the Spix’s population. Today, it has enough space to house 44 birds.
But that’s not enough to supply the reintroduction program — whose managers have a goal of reintroducing 20 birds a year into the wild — if the ACTP decides to abandon the project, placing its flock of 267 birds, with another 60 born every year, out of reach.
ICMBio denies officially agreeing to the goal of releasing 20 birds per year. According to the agency, the protocol was an experimental one, and even if the ACTP continues to fully cooperate with the project, it says drawing this many birds out of the captive population each year could jeopardize the species’ stock.
But Vercillo, who led a study presenting a population viability analysis for the species in 2023, says that’s unlikely. Taking less than 50% of the birds born in captivity, and less than 10% of the captive population, for the reintroduction program every year shouldn’t compromise the captive flock, he says.
Asked about its plans for the future of the Spix’s macaw reintroduction in light of the nonrenewal of the TCA, ICMBio says it will “seek to include all existing Spix’s macaws [in captivity] in the official management program for the species, relying on the continuation of the work developed by the ACTP. If the ACTP decides to withdraw from the reintroduction project, the Brazilian government will continue the project as soon as it is safe to release appropriately sized groups into the wild continuously, in accordance with the best existing knowledge about the species.”
Still, the agency’s decision to give up on the TCA, breaking a partnership that, rocky or not, was working for the benefit of the Spix’s macaw, has left many concerned about the future of the species.
“We hope there will be more releases,” Purchase says. “[A]s long as we can stick to the algorithm and release 20 birds per year, considering the amazing success of the first year’s birds released, we can assume great chances for a sustainable population within 20 years.”
Banner image: A Spix’s macaw at São Paulo Zoo in Brazil. The species’ return to its native habitat, from which it was declared extinct, has been bittersweet: the rewilding program has been a technical success, but bureaucratic wrangling threatens to stall future releases. Image courtesy of São Paulo Zoo.
EU’s legal loophole feeds gray market for world’s rarest parrot
Citation:
Vercillo, U., Oliveira-Santos, L. G., Novaes, M., Purchase, C., Purchase, C., Lugarini, C., … Franco, J. L. (2023). Spix’s macaw Cyanopsitta spixii (Wagler, 1832) population viability analysis. Bird Conservation International, 33. doi:10.1017/s0959270923000217
Credits
