SPIX MACAW.

SPIX MACAW.
12-01-2007

just heard that Loro Parc(tenerife) have hatched another Spix Macaw chick in the last week or so.
I think this will mean they have five birds now as follows;

Pair 1(breeding pair)
Female; bred at LP in 1994(its parents since died)
Male; exchanged from Brazil with a nonbreeding male from LP ( the new one is one of two males taken from the same wild nest, both smuggled into Paraguay & returned about 1998- this incident is described in the 'Spix' book. As such I think they are the offspring of the final wild nesting)
Pair 2- female offspring bred from above pair at end of 2005.
male imported from Germany to make up a 2nd pair(no details)

Plus new chick from pair 1 which hatched very recently.
Not sure if being parent or hand -raised.
Al Wabra Preservation has bred twelve so far(includes 7 bred in 2006)

Presley- the male bird found in a cage in Denver Colorado and returned to Brazil four years ago now lives with a female in a parrot breeding facility outside Sao Paolo- no further news. Some of his DNA cells were collected and stored before departure from USA for possible future cloning experiments......

12-01-2007

despite all the setbacks and obvious slackness that is going on (which is perplexing considering the value of these birds for a recovery program!) - its reallt nice to hear that there has been much progress on the recovery of this species since i last read about it. sounds like it has a very real chance of coming back from the brink now - fingers crossed eh?

thanks for sharing this with us grant.

12-01-2007

on that point earlier at the end of grantsmb comment, what does everyone think of cloning, on 2 levels, endangered species, and of a non-threatened species, eg) bos indicus, bos tauros (cattle) etc

as many are aware i have my morals and ethics, and again i dont like the notion of cloning an aniaml, even if last of it's kind.

i see in my opinion, for expample with the tylacine, why try and bring it back, when the millions of dollars taken to clone it, could be better spent on the conservation of species already alive, so we dont make the same mistake again.

cloning...
12-01-2007

unfortunately zooboy, whilst its nice to say that the millions spent on cloning an extinct animal would be better spend saving another in danger - and whilst there is indeed much truth to this, thats not how the world works. indeed it would be the right theing to do if we all gave a little more of our GDP to obliterating poverty or nice if we looked at habitat destruvtion in 3rd world countries not as their problem, but as everyones. the fact is that its highly unlikely that the money that would and has been financing the thylacine project would have been spent on conservation of any other species had the project not existed. its the very fact that the thylacine is extinct - that created the interest and funds to try and bring it back.

i'm not saying it necessarily right - just the way it is.

my personal beliefs are that, whilst genetic engeneering and cloning offer the world a plethora of environmental benifits, they do so at the risk of others. essentially i think the genetics/cloning boom is a little out of control and is moving too fast for us to respond appropriately. people are patenting lifeforms like crazy - something that potentially puts us in a very dangerous and disturbing position in the future. there is a man trying desperately to thus place a patent on all chimeras (thats any two lifeforms spliced together) not so he can create and own them, but so others cant! whilst he may be doing it ffor the responsible reasons it demonstrates just how vulnerable we are to this very real and distubing future where animals, indeed, life, has become a commercially owned product.

yuk!

so far virtually all cloning of species has been very much for commercial reasons, not conservation. somewhere in the UK they cloned a guar - the project beat up as conservation initiative. this is rediculous since we all know the situation with gaurs, both in the wild and in zoos, is knowhere near at the stage where cloning is required (keep in mind that cloned animals are genrally always unhealthy and carry mitochondrial DNA of their host-egg - in this case a different species, the domestic cow). san diego cloned a banteng, not even a wild banteng either but, like australia's animals one decended from a domesticated strain. the national zoo talked of cloning their long-dead pandas and using black bears as hosts - was this because the genetic pool of pandas desperately needs new blood or because it is potentially cheaper in the long-run to clone their dead pandas than spend 10 million to rent them for a decade - and still not own them or any of their offspring!

no, the truth is that to date there has been no beneficial cloning of endangered species that i know of at all.

but what if the species was already extinct? what if we raised recently-dead animals, animals extinct at the hands of humans like thylacines, yangtze dolphins or dodos? what then about cloning to recover animals that died longer ago, but arguably at the hands of humans, like mammoths or wooly rhino? what about cloning to save a species or suspecies not yet extinct but in desperate need of new blood like the south china tiger or some obscure hawaiian bird?

whilst talk of jurassic park has in many cases given many poeple a false sense of security about the prospect of species going extinct i believe the technology, as dangerous as it can be - can be used responsibly. i for one would love to see a restored tasmanian wilderness with its top predator back in place. i can imagine the attention and funding such a project could gather could spurr a huge amount of attention/protection into tasmanian forests - but at the same time it could very much go the other way, being already extinct once, i can imagine it swinging the other way, with little interest in reintroducing an incredably expensive, alreadt extinct animal that has absolutely massive commercial potential in a zoo...

like anything to do with the issue it can swing both ways, its up to the intentions of people that dictate with me whether or not it is moralistic.

little cloned Qi Qi's doing tricks in an hong kong aquarium for $500 a ticket? no thanks!

a genetically varied pod of cloned dolphins spurring an interest in cleaning up stretches of the yangtze and protecting the endemic porpoises - hey, if it gets the job done...

13-01-2007

Yes Pat it does seem there's an upturn in the Spix's fortunes now, but it does seem mainly due to the efforts of the private breeders, both past and present. Al Wabra(the Sheik) would now seem to hold the key, both in the numbers of birds they hold, their success in breeding them so far, and their potential to do so in future. But I presume that these birds are still privately owned- as they came into his hands from private ownership? Maybe the Sheik will cede their ownership, or the offspring to Brazil in the future... The five Loro Parc birds are all property of Brazil, so 'politically' speaking Loro Parc are at present playing the most idealogical role in conserving them. Its still a very complicated situation and I think that without these foreign breeders,and their preparedness to be involved with relocating birds back to Brazil, that any efforts in Brazil(or lack of them) would come to little and Spix would soon head into oblivion.....

14-01-2007

Depends on whether he plans to make lots of money out of them, or if he gets his jollies from the idea that he holds most of the individuals of an almost extinct species. Being active in the avicultural world, most individuals can be put into one of these groups.
1.Ordinary people, without a lot of money who just love birds, want to do the rigght thing by them, keep a few parrots and finches.
2.People who see the possibility of making huge amounts of money from rare species, new mutations etc and are not really interested in the birds themselves.
3. People who are determined to help conservation by keeping rare species, helping in wild conservation efferts etc ( In aust. there are quite a few incolved in Gouldians finches and the golden sholdered parrot.)
4. People who get a real buzz in being the most exclusive, oholding the only individuals etc.
The sheik could be in any of the following. Not knowing him or his past we can't tell yet.

The Sheik
14-01-2007

I think we can safely eliminate him from Jays first group of people ?

14-01-2007

I imagine he definately belongs in category 4!!- but hopefully his motives extend to category 3 too- only time will tell. Sadly most of the private owners to date have been category 4.....

02-12-2007

The Al Wabra preservation station(type in Al Wabra) has produced a breakdown of where all the Spix Macaws currently in the breeding programme are held. It is right up to date too.

There are some 76 birds in the breeding programme, of which 50 are held at Al Wabra, 14 by a German breeder, 5 at Loro Parc, Tenerife, and the remaining 7 are divided between Sao Paolo Zoo and one other site in Brazil.

But most interestingly, it also says there are a total of (approx) 120 birds in captivity, indicating they know of a considerable number of birds which are still in 'hidden' ownership. Among the 76 'public' birds, there now seems to be an increasingly high proportion of females, so there could be a shortage of males for new pairings in future. This is the reverse of the situation when Spix was at its lowest ebb some years ago, only about a third of the known captive population then were females.