Blue-fronted Amazon Project

Category: Nestlings, Pantanal, illegal wildlife trade | Date: Oct 06 2008 | By: Blue-fronted Amazon

Other 225 nestling parrots were seized last week by the Military Police at Mato Grosso do Sul state!!! Now they sum 600 blue-fronted parrots and 16 yellow-faced parrots, taken from their nests to supply the (national and international) illegal animal trade – only on this reproductive season!!! These animals are now receiving health care at the Wild Animal Rehabilitation Center (CRAS) at Campo Grande. Since it was created 20 years ago, the CRAS has received thousands and thousands of blue-fronted parrot nestlings. Most of them captured on the board of Sao Paulo and Mato Grosso do Sul states. The smugglers know this area pretty well, and sometimes stairs are left year-round at the nest-threes to facilitate the capture on the following reproductive season!  This year the illegal capture of these animals was unquestionably very intense; however, it will take three to four years for this huge decrease of recruitment to affect the wild population of parrots – about when the parrots would start their reproduction. The Blue-fronted Parrot Project aims to raise public awareness about the consequences of this uncontrolled illegal capture of the parrots. For the part decade we have been trying to instruct public not to acquire/buy those animals for pets – no consumers/buyers, no reason for the smugglers to capture them.We hope to come back with some better news next time.

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Category: Education, Nestlings, Pantanal, illegal wildlife trade | Date: Oct 01 2008 | By: Blue-fronted Amazon

On Sept 19^th, after receiving an anonymous call, the Environmental Military Police made the seizure of 377 offspring of parrots - the largest ever held in Mato Grosso do Sul. Fifty-three, out of the 377 nestlings, died. Fifteen were yellow-faced parrots (Amazona xanthops), and the rest were blue-fronted parrots (A. aestiva). The parrots were being transported in boxes of vegetables and came from Ivinhema (approximately 290 km from Campo Grande) and the smugglers were using kids to collect the nestlings and eggs from the nests. The animals were brought to the Center for Rehabilitation of Wild Animals (CRAS) in Campo Grande, where they are receiving health care from the CRAS personnel, under the coordination of Vinicius Andrade Lopes. Sadly, the blue-fronted amazon parrot is still illegally collected in Brazil. It is a very popular parrot, due its ability to mimic sounds – being able to imitate words and phrases. This illegal capture directly decreases the recruitment of this species, and compromises its ability for further reproduction, as most of the nest-cavities are destroyed by the smugglers in order to gain access to the nests. These animals will stay at least for one year at CRAS and might be released after that. I met with Vinicius to discuss the necessary strategies in order to prevent the illegal wildlife trade, as raise public awareness and monitoring. It is very sad for us to see all these animals, knowing that they are only a small fraction of all the animals captured every year. But we will keep fighting for them and their environment. We will use all our efforts to fight against the illegal wildlife trade, and aware public about the importance of this and all the other wildlife species in Pantanal. We won’t give up. We will never give up.

Tags: Illegal Animal Trade, Nestlings, Pantanal

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