This is the first 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 Two tomorrow. RIO DE JANEIRO — On May 24 this year, Ugo Vercillo woke up to a piece of amazing news: two parrot fledglings, born in the wild in Curaçá municipality, in the Brazilian state of Bahia, had taken flight for the first time. These weren’t just any parrots; they were Spix’s macaws (Cyanopsitta spixii), one of the world’s most threatened species, with its few living individuals all confined to captive facilities around the world. Or at least they were, prior to 2022. Now, 11 of these stunning blue birds are flying free again in the semiarid Caatinga biome of northern Bahia, and hatching a new generation of wild macaws, a testament to an intensive conservation effort that some consider — at least as far as parrots are concerned — the most successful ever attempted. Vercillo, the technical director of Blue Sky Caatinga, a conservation organization focused on restoring Caatinga ecosystems and closely involved in the Spix’s macaw reintroduction, says the young birds that left the nest in May weren’t the first wild hatchlings born from the program. That first batch, a duo born in 2023, died before being able to fly. So when Vercillo and other conservationists discovered a new clutch of eggs earlier this year, they were determined to act. “We had to intervene,” Vercillo tells Mongabay.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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