City ParrotsUrban Scarlet Macaw & Parrot Conservation

Gulf times by Fran Gillespie

Brilliantly coloured Birds of Paradise fly from tree to tree in a vast aviary, their iridescent plumage glittering in the sunlight.Below them, pink flamingoes and white spoonbills stalk the shallow waters of a pool, and the silence is broken by the harsh cries of Red-tailed cockatoos. All this under one roof? Yes, said Richard Switzer, the bird curator of the Al Wabra Wildlife Preservation near Shahaniya, in his presentation to members of the Qatar Natural History Group (QNHG) last Wednesday.

Unbelievable though it may seem, in the midst of the dry desert landscape is an oasis filled with mature trees and gardens, where some of the world’s rarest species of birds and animals are being successfully bred. Founded as a hobby farm by the father of the owner, a member of the ruling family, the Al Wabra reserve has now been transformed into a state-of-the-art breeding and research centre for endangered species.

It currently holds more than 1,000 mammals and 700 birds, plus four species of reptiles. Some of the breeding programmes at Al Wabra are unique, said Switzer. “We have the only breeding herd in the world of the rare Beira antelope, with a current population of about 50 animals.” A small, delicately-built antelope that inhabits the arid regions of Somalia and eastern Ethiopia, the Beira is just one of several species of antelope, gazelle and oryx held at Al Wabra.

Even rarer is the Spix’s macaw, now extinct in its native Brazil. Its story is a sad one, typical of the fate of so many parrots and macaws that have suffered from widespread trapping for the exotic pet trade. The introduction of the aggressive Africanised bee, which competed for nest sites, stinging and killing breeding birds on their nests, also contributed to its decline. The last wild male disappeared in October 2000. Fewer than a hundred Spix’s macaws were in captivity world-wide, but the owner of Al Wabra set about buying a number from private collections in the Philippines and Switzerland, and a breeding programme to save the bird from total extinction was begun. Now, some 50 birds, representing 75% of the entire known population of Spix’s macaws, are at Al Wabra.

“It was not all plain sailing,” said Switzer. “Many of the birds we acquired were diseased, and these had to be treated. “Every 12 months a vet comes over from Germany to conduct a thorough check on our birds. But more serious is the fact that because all the birds in captivity are probably descended from a few individuals, there are inbreeding problems. “There is the occasional misshapen egg, chicks sometimes fail to hatch, and there are behavioural problems.” Despite these teething problems, the future of the bird now seems assured, and their devoted carer dreams of one day seeing them reintroduced to the wild. In 2006, 12 eggs were laid, and removed to incubators for hatching. Seven chicks survived. In 2007, 32 eggs have been laid, and a higher percentage of chicks was successfully reared.

Birds of Paradise are particularly difficult to keep in captivity, said Switzer, and at Al Wabra they are proud to number no fewer than six species in the collection. Each of the breeding pairs have to be given an aviary to themselves, as the birds are aggressive and a male bird will not tolerate the presence of another male.

Carefully planted rainforest foliage, maintained by frequent misting with water, provides display perches for the males, and nesting sites.

The diet for these birds, some of the most exotically plumaged of any birds in the world, has to be very carefully monitored, said Switzer.“Many come from rainforests where the soil is very low in nutrients, and the birds have adapted to this by extracting every scrap of nourishment from their food, including iron.“If fed in captivity on fruit grown in good soil they take too much iron out of their food, which is then stored in the liver and can kill them.”
The birds at Al Wabra thrive on a diet of papaya, mango, nuts and special pellets, and chicks, hand-reared by the staff, are carefully monitored and their weight checked and recorded on graphs.Some become imprinted on humans as a result of the hand-rearing, and rush to “greet” anyone who approaches their aviaries!

The work being undertaken at Al Wabra is world-renowned, but here in Qatar has not been widely publicised. Al Wabra is not a zoo, and visitors other than professional zoologists and animal management experts are not generally admitted. There is a fear that infection could be introduced, and breeding birds disturbed by too many people near their cages.

A constant dark shadow on the horizon is the nightmare of avian flu, and the recent detection of this in Saudi Arabia has brought this potentially disastrous disease a step nearer. The staff who care for the birds of Al Wabra can only keep their fingers crossed and hope that their highly successful breeding programmes will continue to save endangered species for years to come.