Following on from this morning's kakapo story, here is more endangered parrot news.Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation organization, owned and founded by H.E. Sheikh Saoud Bin Mohd. Bin Ali Al-Thani, has purchased Concordia Farm in Brazil.
Located in Bahia State, the 2,200 hectare Concordia Farm is within the most historically significant range of the Spix's macaw. One of the last recorded sightings of wild Spix's macaw was on Concordia Farm, amongst the Caraibeira trees lining a creek which flows through the property, during October 2000. Concordia Farm was also the base of the Spix's Macaw field project, which operated throughout the 1990s, until completion in 2002. In 1995, the release of the only captive Spix's macaw back into the wild, was from this location.
Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation secured Concordia Farm for the Spix's macaw and plans to allow it to return to a more natural state by removing domestic livestock. In the long term, we hope that this land will prove to be a valuable habitat resource for plans in the future to re-establish Spix's macaws back to the wild.
In the last 3 years: 16 Spix’s macaws have been bred at Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation, 4 at Loro Parque in Tennerife and 2 at Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots in Berlin. All chicks bred at Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation have been hand-reared by experienced staff, since it is considered a safer option than parent rearing, and the priority at the moment is to increase the population. When the captive population is considered more secure, breeding pairs will be given the opportunity to raise some of their own young. The current world captive population stands at 154 individuals.
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