Our mission in parrot conservation is best summarized in these two articles:
- Parrot park life: Suburbia is boomtown for parrots
- Free-range parrots: The end of captive conservation?
In overview the benefits of free-range parrots for conservation and reintroduction:
Objectives of City Parrots:
- Enjoy free-ranging parrots
- Investigate potential uses of free-ranging parrots for conservation
- Educating the public on the plight for parrots
1. Prevention of artificial selection:
- Adequate flying skills: endurance, formation, manoeuvring
- Predator avoiding skills: group/pair response to approaching predators, nest site choice, appropriate feeding behaviour
- Feeding skills: wide variety of food familiarities and food handling skills
- Social Skills: group living, communication repertoire, fission and fusion
2. Intensive management:
- Double clutching
- Diet supplements
- Foster parroting
- Disease monitoring
- Detailed knowledge on individual histories and relationships
3. Unlocking captive lineages to conservation:
- With the cooperation of aviculturists captive lineages of parrots can be introduced to free ranging conditions by foster parroting
Disadvantages:
- Exposure to the elements and predators
- No direct conservation benefits to original habitat in country of origin
Research opportunities:
- Intimate knowledge of the dynamics of group living in parrots
- Recording the history of the individual and their relations
- Close monitoring of group development
- Individual recognition
- Fission and fusion
- Recording social behaviour and communications
Research questions:
- Is cross species foster parroting a viable method to introduce captive lineages of Psittaciformes to evolutionary relevant conditions?
- To what extend can rescued birds be rehabilitated to free-range flock living?
- Can parrot-coop or parrot-loft training provide shelter from predators and/ore climatic extremes like frost and hurricanes?
Definitions:
- Artificial selection:
- genetic changes resulting from general adaptations to captivity that result in captive populations getting less and less adapted to the wild (Derrickson et al. 1992)
- Free-range:
- form of aviculture that manages generations of wild born birds with partial dependencies on humans.
- Dependencies:
- reliance on supplemental food, shelter and/ore nest sites etc.
- Foster parroting:
- parrot eggs or chicks that are foster parented by a pair of the same or a closely related species.
- Rescued birds:
- former pets or aviary bred birds that have been taken in by rescue centres, many of which suffer behavioural problems or are physically, conditionally or psychologically damaged.
- Double clutching:
- increasing population growth by removing the first clutch of eggs for hand raising or foster parroting and so induce a second round of egg laying of the target species.
Cited literature:
- Derrickson, S.R. and Snyder, N.F.R. 1992. Potentials and limits of captive breeding in parrot conservation. Pp.133—163 In: S.R. Beissinger and N.F.R. Snyder (Eds) New World parrots in crisis: Solutions from conservation biology. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC
