Pet Trade Blues - the efforts and moral problems involved in attempting to save Brazil's Lear's macaws from extinction

Protecting the last of Brazil's Lear's macaws involves a difficult moral dilemma

WITH AN AIR of proprietary pride, Jose Cardoso de Macedo, 60, looks out over the nesting site of one of the world's rarest birds. The land before him--a green canyon nestled between spectacular red cliffs--has been in his family since the turn of the century. So if there is

such a thing as a guardian of the species, it is Senhor Zequinha, as Cardoso is known.

The bird, a vibrant, cobalt blue parrot, is called the Lear's macaw. Some 20 miles from Cardoso's mud house, a clamorous flock of perhaps 40 of these spectacular creatures swoops through arid fields covered with sinuous licuri palms, the nuts of which serve as the parrots' primary food. This single conglomeration of birds comprises about one-fourth of the species' total wild population.

"There used to be 200, maybe 300, birds flying overhead every day," Cardoso says, dragging deeply on a cigarette rolled with tobacco so strong it is referred to as rat killer. He leans on the house where he was born, his avuncular face curling up into a grin as he strokes a turquoise-fronted parrot caged above his head.

The roosting site of the Lear's macaw was discovered here in northeastern Brazil a mere 20 years ago. Now the species is nearing extinction. Its decline is largely the result of illegal poaching for the pet trade combined with the degradation of a unique habitat ravaged by drought and social misery.

Sr. Zequinha is just one of many colorful rescuers involved in a last- ditch effort to save the remaining birds. Other players in this drama include Brazilian and foreign ornithologists as well as government conservationists, some of whom are now wrestling over competing strategies, not the least of which involves a contentious moral dilemma: Should presumably reformed bird traders, who come with shady pasts but offer intimate knowledge of the parrots, be a part of the rescue effort?

The struggle over how to resolve that question illustrates the challenges involved in preserving a species with high commercial value and in dealing with everyday questions about how best to pursue a noble goal in a world that is neither black nor white. For the Lear's macaw, those challenges are especially formidable because time is running out.

The story of the species goes back to at least 1856, when the bird was first described by Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's nephew, and instantly valued as a great rarity. It was named after Edward Lear, an English artist better known for his nonsense rhymes, who had painted a blue parrot in 1832, not realizing at the time that it was a species unto itself. From the first, the bird's origin was shrouded in mystery. Of numerous theories, the most accepted was that it was a hybrid between the hyacinth and glaucous macaws.

An expatriate German scientist--Helmut Sick, considered Brazil's premier ornithologist--was convinced otherwise. To demonstrate that the Lear's was a separate species, he needed to find the bird's roosting site. That would prove far from easy, in part because of the extreme inhospitability of the parrot's native habitat. Referred to as the caatinga, which in the Tupi native language means "white forest," the area is naturally prone to droughts. The vegetation consists of succulent plants, cacti and terrestrial bromeliads, with thorny trees and bushes hitched to a sandy soil. Years of intense human activity have further exacerbated the region's arid nature.

The caatinga also harbors a long history of social unrest. At the turn of this century, a messianic priest named Ant(tm)nio Conselheiro and his 30,000 followers--royalists who were resisting the imposition of republican rule--were slaughtered to the last man in a town right next to the Lear's population. The region has also produced other charismatic characters able to harness the discontent prevalent among the peasant classes against an exploitative elite. Today, a rugged local population struggles on.

In 1978 after several frustrated attempts, Sick finally managed to locate the Lear's roost, ironically using information collected from traffickers. It was a moment he described as the most thrilling in his illustrious career. But it may have also been a disaster for the bird. "After the gringo came," says Sr. Zequinha, referring to Sick, "people from all over the world visited our valley. But we also saw that the number of birds went down a lot. That's when the traffickers came here all the time."

The traffickers, whose take of Lear's macaws started on a large scale in the 1990s, are part of an ongoing worldwide trade in wild animals that is estimated to generate around $10 billion a year, of which Brazil accounts for $700 million. About 30 percent of the animals captured by traffickers in Brazil are sent abroad, while the remaining 70 percent feed domestic demand, with the great majority sold in open- air street markets. The rarest birds of all are funneled to collectors who either keep them or sell them abroad.