City Parrots

March 2005 Wouter Teunissen, Grace Innemee and Roelant Jonker discovered two Scarlet Macaws (Ara macao) on an estate in the Netherlands province of Noord-Holland. You can read the story of their discovery in ”Macaws in the Famous sky over Holland”. This field report summarises what we have learned about these two macaws.

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20 years ago I first heard about Macaws flying freely in my home country of the Netherlands. I was watching a television show presented by famous Dutch comedian and nature show host Ivo de Wijs. He talked about a 17th century estate in the west of The Netherlands that was recently bought by the national forest service. He pictured the audience a romantic view on the history of the estate with many tropical plants that, like magic, got a foothold in its 17th century landscape. This magic also extended to the bird life because at the end of the show there were a few glimpses of Macaws sitting high up a tree. I could not believe my eyes. Still a child then I wanted to jump on a train to find them. But I had forgotten the name of the estate and for a long time I never heard of these Macaws again.

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Captive conservation of parrot populations has many advantages. Intensive husbandry, veterinary and dietary control enable conservation biologist to boost threatened populations of parrots remarkably. The shelter provided also protects them against foul weather like tropical storms that have the power to devastate island, or otherwise confined, populations of parrot. Captive conservation management is however expensive and holds risks of its own. Building aviaries and paying people to maintain them is usually by far the biggest drain on captive conservation budgets. Dollars better spent on “in situ” projects where they would be more effective. Captivity itself has adverse effects on parrots as well. In many cases confined and frustrated parrots start to show self mutilating and aggressive behaviours. Resulting in damaged or even the dead breeding stock. In situ projects are far more economic for they do not require aviaries or their maintenance. But leaves you with finite control over disease, weather and other chance effects that could influence the populations stability. So is there a method of managing parrot populations that gives you the best of both?

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The Parrot family is the avian class most at risk of extinction. In sharp contrast, it is also the class very many naturalised species. Conservation should learn from this. Parrots from a wide range species and genera life naturalised in cities, suburbs, parks and botanical gardens on every continent. Some of these naturalized species are endangered, critically endangered and even now extinct in native ranges. Suburban parrots show that parrots can adapt to alien habitats and maintain sizable populations there. Although no substitute for habitat preservation, establishing native suburban populations of threatened or near-threatened species is a comparatively simple and economic conservation tool of use for species of parrots that are now mostly neglected by conservation.

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