Bianca’s Bird Farm sits on a two-lane country road outside of the city of Antwerp in Belgium. There’s no sign out front, just a keypad and a video camera. A wooden gate and tall hedges block the view, but if you pass through to the aviaries in back, you may just get a glimpse of one of the most threatened parrots on Earth: the Spix’s macaw (Cyanopsitta spixii), a brilliant blue bird from Brazil that’s currently considered extinct in the wild. The farm’s owners have acquired six of them in recent years, despite an international ban on the species’ commercial trade. In fact, European wildlife officials approved the deal that brought them there. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), an international treaty from 1973, was supposed to prevent such transfers from taking place, conservationists say. All of the world’s Spix’s macaws, some 200 birds, are thought to be descended from seven individuals that were likely snatched from their tree-hole nests in northeastern Brazil and smuggled out of the country. When CITES came into force, the Spix’s macaw was one of the first animals on the list. From then on, the birds could only be moved across international borders with a permit for specific purposes, such as scientific research, zoological exhibitions, or conservation programs. The Spix’s macaw is one of the rarest birds in the world: it is estimated that there are only 177 captive individuals in the world. The species was declared extinct in the wild in…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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