Macaw Rescue Cover Story

The Scarlet Macaw, Ara macao, one of the largest and most beautiful members of the parrot family, is native to humid evergreen forests from Mexico to the Brazilian Amazon. They live high in the rainforest canopy, where they feed on flower buds, nectar, and a variety of nuts, fruits and seeds that they crack open with their powerful jaws.

Scarlet Macaws typically live 30-50 years in the wild, and form long-term monogamous pair bonds. They nest in tree hollows high off the ground, where they lay 2-4 eggs. Females take main responsibility for incubating eggs, but after hatching, chicks are cared for by both parents. Young birds stay with their parents for between one and two years. Parents do not lay another clutch of eggs until the young are living on their own.

Macaws, along with a third of all parrots, are listed as endangered under the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). Their numbers are decreasing for three reasons: their habitats are being destroyed by logging, agriculture, and development; they are hunted for meat; and their chicks are targeted by poachers who supply the pet trade. Because macaws are on the CITES endangered list, it is illegal to take them from the wild, or import them into any country that signed the CITES treaty, without a permit.

Aside from food value, poaching of macaws for the pet trade can be very lucrative. Individual birds may be sold for more than $1,000 - an enormous amount of money in many parts of the birds' natural range. Because the bird nest so high in the canopy, sometimes poachers cut down trees to bring nests within reach.

Macaws are also important to ecotourism, which, in Costa Rica, employs more people than any other industry. In one recent year, 40,000 tourists visited Costa Rica's Carara National Park - mostly to see the macaws. Those tourists spent $6 million... but a careful analysis showed that only 6% of that money actually benefited communities in and around the park.

Given the nature of threats to macaws, any realistic approach to conservation must:

• protect natural habitats from development
• address the threat from poachers
• create alternative income sources to replace the loss of income from clearing land and hunting and poaching birds
• work together with members of local human communities to foster education and understanding of the ecological goods and services provided by natural habitats and members of natural communities.

Ideally, the end result of these efforts would be a situation in which local people recognize that protection of natural habitats and animal populations can serve their long-term economic interests.

Both organizations inform their conservation efforts with the best available science. They share a passion for the importance of nature in its own right, as well as an understanding of the importance of ecosystem goods and services to human community. Both understand that enduring conservation success depends on active involvement of local communities whose lives and livelihoods are linked to the conservation of natural systems.

The EcoLogic Development Fund
The key to EcoLogic's sustainable impact is its combination of scientifically informed action and its dynamic partnerships with grassroots and indigenous-led organizations that reflect the values and talents of their communities. This people-centered conservation approach has helped make the Sarstoon-Temash National Park in Belize, a wetland of international importance, into a safe-haven for the scarlet macaw. The Sarstoon Temash Institute for Indigenous Management, founded in 1999 with EcoLogic's help by local communities, manages 42,000 acres of diverse coastal ecosystems - home to macaws, jaguars, manatees, and neotropical river otters.

EcoLogic helps provide incentives and alternatives that align conservation with improved opportunities for local people. In addition to strengthening the park's guarding and monitoring capabilities, its work targets the park's buffer zones where poor communities reside. By promoting shade-grown agriculture that does not compete with forests, providing training in eco-tourism activities, and facilitating environmental education workshops that enable communities and schools to effectively steward their resources, EcoLogic integrates local needs and talents to ensure long-term sustainable conservation. To date, EcoLogic has provided direct assistance to more than 5000 rural communities who serve as stewards to over 6 million acres of ecologically rich habitat in Latin America.

The Nature Conservancy
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) aims to preserve biological diversity using the best available science and a non-confrontational approach to developing innovative solutions to complex problems at scales that matter and in ways that will endure. As part of this effort, TNC is launching an unprecedented effort to conserve the forests of Central America and their unique species before the corridor is irrevocably fragmented. One part of this effort aims to protect Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula, home to the country's largest population (300 breeding pairs) of scarlet macaws - along with endangered endemic species large and small, from white-lipped peccaries to giant anteaters.

TNC aims to help protect as much of the one million-acre Osa Conservation Area as possible, including surrounding marine environments. Collaborating with local partners, TNC seeks to improve park management, consolidate protected areas, facilitate private land conservation, and design financial mechanisms that will ensure long-term, sustainable conservation. In La Amistad, a bi-national park spanning more than one million acres in Costa Rica and Panama, communities are learning to see protected area status not as an obstacle to economic development, but instead as an opportunity. Parkland conservation protects their ability to generate income from activities like ecotourism, or the sustainable production of organic honey, coffee, cocoa, and fruits. To date, TNC has protected more than 117 million acres of land and 5,000 miles of rivers worldwide - and operates more than 100 marine conservation projects globally.