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Institutional conflict puts successful Spix’s macaw reintroduction at risk

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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…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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