6 Lear's macaws from Loro Parque re-introduced into the wild : Endangered macaws reintroduced to Brazil - BirdGuides
Did the released birds manage to survive without the guidance of wild birds? This would be a rare achievement and a lesson for Spix macaw reintroduction. I sometimes feel it could be easier to translocate groups of wild macaws to new places, and use zoo-breed chicks to reinforce the remaining colonies. This way would transfer survival skills of wild birds, which are very difficult to reproduce for humans.
I think you could be right, it is generally now accepted in conservation that translocation is almost always easier, more cost-effective and likely to succeed without such high attritition rates (and initial problems with survivorship) than reintroduction.
Honestly, that is of course an open door. To conserve a species is always going to be more cost effective than any reintroduction effort can or will be. In fairness, any conservation program needs a long term commitment, which can sometimes be problematic with national or provincial authorities who like to see tangible results in 1-2 years. I am not sure the translocation effort is open to the Lear macaw program. I would favour augmenting the source population once the reintroduction effort has been demonstrated to be non detrimental to the original breeding population (something that may also be problematic). So, the conservation group now moving forward with soft release captive-bred birds is fine with me. If we are to get serious about species and habitat recovery we need to start somewhere and pretty darn soon. The more successful reintroduction projects and number of reintroduced species successes going forward, the better ... We, beggars cannot be too choosy.
Oh yes, I agree with you that a conservation program needs long term commitment. In fact I would put it in far stronger terms and say that it demands long term commitment and not even in a decade will you typically see results. I tend to think that it would be more like over the span of multiple decades, basically the span of a human lifetime or more before people begin to see anything that approaches a level of meaningful success. When I look at conservation projects like the golden lion tamarin association in Rio being labeled as a conservation success I kind of find it strange because to me despite all of the battles won the war / work to save that species isn't over. Also, agree that national and provincial authorities frequently complicate things unnecessarily due to bureaucracy and wanting to see results magically appear in ridiculously short periods of time but this wouldn't just apply to governments. For example, unfortunately there are plenty of PhD projects and university research into conservation that lasts 4 or 5 years and then once the paper has been written and the doctorate earned the student and professor shift their attention back to their own careers and scaling the acaemic ladder. A species / ecosystem and human community that was once the focus becomes conveniently forgotten. Once more, agree about the reintroduction effort with the Lear's and in supporting it though I have to admit that I do worry about the loss of birds. But to some extent there will always be some difficulties with survivorship at first anyway and I agree that time is of the essence.
In any recovery effort and in particular with captive-bred sourced individuals you have to accept losses. You can try to have mitigating measures in place, but it is always trial and error. Remember as a basic rule: a pair of barn owls produces X amount of fertile eggs, 4 hatch successfully and 3 survive to fledging stage. After that and the initial menial care phase by parents these chicks are on their own. Survivability is then a chance of 50/50 for each fledgeling chick. This is no different in any recovery effort, either by translocation wild - wild (where I suspect chances remain higher due to local pre-adaptability if birds are adult ...) or by transferring in captive-bred birds either hard release or pre-training soft release. Reintroduction and recovery are a question of introducing a sufficient number of birds over multiple years with a monitoring strategy in place including monitored individuals by PIT or GPS transmitters and camera trapping and visual tracking by telemetry and ranger observations.
Its a difficult one, thats for sure, and unfortunately like all conservation interventions at this moment in time it is made even more difficult by the current political situation in Brazil and of course the ongoing pandemic. I agree that losses are inevitable and that timing is of the essence here but like with the Spix macaw effort I do wonder whether this particular reintroduction could have waited a little longer, perhaps a few more years, before going ahead.
Overview and latest numbers of the re-introduction program : Lear's Macaw Reintroduction — Reverse the Red
Article about this event : Loro Parque Fundación achieves a new milestone in the reintroduction of the Lear's Macaw in Brazil
