Why City Parrots can help with parrot conservation

Red-fronted conures checking out the local Gazette, Miami Springs, FLCity slickers

Have you spotted them in your area already? Chances are you are closer to a wild parrot than you might have imagined. In the USA and Europe, many major cities have one or two species of parrot living and breeding within their city limits. 10 European capitals, for example, hold psittacine populations.

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A Fighting Chance

An ambitious recovery project is giving the Puerto Rican parrot, one of the world’s ten most endangered birds, a new lease on life.

Taino Indians called the Puerto Rican parrot iguaca, a name that captures the essence of its raucous call, a combination of squawk and car horn about as soothing as the sound of fingernails on a blackboard. “Once you hear it, there’s no other call out here like it,” whispered Tom White, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist with the Puerto Rican parrot recovery program. We had been huddled in this canvas blind for more than three hours, looking at the jungle through a tiny tinted window. Forty yards away, lashed to a broken trunk of a palo colorado tree, was a nesting box constructed of a PVC drum with a four-foot-long, periscope-shaped entryway. We heard parrots around us. Guawk, guawk. Guawk, guawk. The sound grew louder and then receded into the forest. “Messin’ with us,” White muttered.

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Why hasn't the Puerto Rican parrot recovered?

Puerto Rican Parrot. Image: Pablo Torres, USFWS Despite more than 40 years of conservation efforts, the Puerto Rican parrot (Amazona vittata) remains one of the world's most critically endangered birds, with only an estimated 30 to 40 parrots left in the wild. They exist in just a single location, Puerto Rico's El Yunque National Forest.

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