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Parrots known as Spiks macaws, a bird previously extinct in the wild, have begun to flourish in South Africa following a successful breeding and conservation programme.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Twenty years ago the future of the iconic bird looked pretty bleak.<\/p>\n
The last member of the species had disappeared from the wild, leaving only a few birds in the cages of collectors scattered around the world.<\/p>\n
But already thanks to the efforts of parrot conservation Cyanopsitta<\/em> spicii<\/em> \u2013 with its characteristic gray head and bright blue feathers has made a sensational comeback.<\/p>\n A bunch of them are already flying to their native Brazil, after being released a month ago.<\/p>\n Later this year, activists plan to release more birds, which are expected to start breeding on their own in the wild next spring.<\/p>\n “The project is going very well,” says biologist Tom White, an adviser to the U.S. Wildlife and Fisheries Service.<\/p>\n “One month after we released the birds, they have all survived. They behave as a herd and stay close to the release site, sampling the vegetation there. It’s going as well as it could.”<\/p>\n Macaw Spix is \u200b\u200bnamed after the German biologist Johann Baptist Ritter von Spix, who first recorded it as a species in 1819. But the bird fell victim to environmental damage that began in the 19th century with the expansion of agriculture in the Caatinga forests in northeastern Brazil.<\/p>\n The bird has been saved through conservation projects as well as modern genetics for determining breeding pairs and artificial pollination.<\/p>\n So several hundred Macaw Spiks were born in closed conditions and then learned to survive in the wild.<\/p>\n \n<\/p>\n top channel
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