Scarlet MacawThe extraordinarily flamboyant scarlet macaws adorn Belize’s Chiquibul Forest with an awesome and alluring beauty. The bird, once widespread in parts of Mexico and Central America, has Belize’s Chiquibul Forest as one of its last havens, but not for too long if the illegal poaching allegedly occurring at the hands of illegal Guatemalan exploiters continues unchecked.Going by the scientific name Ara macao cyanoptera, the subspecies is numbered at less than 100 pairs in Belize. It is threatened with extinction, existing only in isolated pockets in this region. In Belize, the Upper Macal becomes an active breeding ground from January to July every year, according to Friends for Conservation and Development, which co-manages the Chiquibul National Park and has the nearly impossible task of maintaining surveillance in the area.
The exotic scarlet macaws are sold for a handsome price tag in illegal international trade. As we have previously reported, scarlet macaws are more prone to be robbed as chicks, though the adults hold a higher monetary value. A macaw chick would be sold for 2,400 quetzales, about BZ$700; adults can be sold for up to 4,000 quetzales, or about BZ$1,000.
The Executive Director of Friends for Conservation and Development notes: “The fact is that we are losing these birds every week at the hands of Guatemalans. Given this reality we suspect that the population will not make it too far. We are really getting concerned. We have upgraded our monitoring program, yet Guatemalans are elusive.”
In 2009, 10 macaws, valued at up to $10,000, were being sold in Las Flores de Chiquibul in Guatemala: “The wildlife smugglers had hiked two days to reach to the Upper Macal.” The birds are smuggled along the western border of Belize where they are sold in Guatemala on the local market.
“Guatemalans have consistently been reaping the natural and cultural resources in the Chiquibul Forest and by 2007, as they advanced further into Belize, they had eventually reached to the breeding grounds of the macaws,” FCD asserts. “In Guatemala, the macaw population has been diminished primarily due to the robbing of chicks and consequently, we understood that the same fate was prone to occur in Belize.”
FCD’s challenge is limited manpower and resources. “The situation is grim and given the amount of persons illegally operating in the Chiquibul forest, we are certain that a window of opportunity to save this species from extinction is slim,” the FCD laments.
“Loss of chicks at the hands of Guatemalan poachers engaged in the pet trade and the removal of the nesting habitat can wipe out the remaining wild populations of macaws in Belize in a few years,” FCD warns. “In order to obtain the chicks, the poachers will climb the tree with spikes or in a desperate state will either burn the tree trunks or cut it with axe and machetes.”
This is exactly what the FCD reports happening during this breeding season: “In late May, the rangers detected a series of poaching activity in the impoundment area. These activities include adult birds being shot, perhaps because they make too much noise when the poachers are trying to reach the nest cavity. Four trees were found cut down and some burnt when poachers could not climb the trees; in other cases the poachers have climbed the trees with chiclero spurs and raided the nest cavities.”
April, May and June are the months when illegal activities spike, and so there is the need for increased surveillance.
Apart from the poaching of the Scarlet Macaws, the FCD also reports that curassows, quams, deer and peccaries have also been illegally hunted, expounding that “…other wildlife species, particularly game birds in the Chiquibul, are similarly impacted by poaching for subsistence and even commercial purposes at the hands of Guatemalans. From the time we have been in the Chiquibul we have not documented a single Belizean hunter in these remote areas.”