25 Year old Foundation showing great conservation progress in Brazil, which translates throughout region.

The Foundation, which has turned 25 this year, has added the pechigrís parakeet to the list of species it has managed to save from extinction with its ‘in situ’ and ‘ex situ’ work.

This year, as part of the celebration of its 25th anniversary, Loro Parque Fundación has managed to add to its list of species saved from extinction to the pechigrís parakeet (Pyrrhura griseipectus) from Brazil. With this success, the Foundation celebrates that it has already prevented the disappearance of ten species of parrots thanks to a long work of protection and conservation in situ and ex situ.

The pechigrís parakeet, originally from the mountains of Baturité, was threatened by poaching for the pet market and the lack of suitable nesting sites. However, the alliance between Loro Parque Fundación and the AQUASIS organization has enhanced the work of the renowned biologist Fabio Nunes and his team in the area, where they have managed to count more than 1000 pigeons born in artificial nests.

This incredible result has to do, precisely, with the placement of these nests and their follow-up as of 2010, despite the difficulties faced during the process, such as protection against predators.

One of the ways to observe and understand the habits of this species, little known in the past, has been the active presence in the field, which has allowed to obtain a lot of very important scientific information even for other projects of similar characteristics.

In addition, the marking work has been fundamental, because they allow obtaining data on the movement and distribution of the parakeets – through their banding -, which are able to hide very well among the vegetation. The creation of protected areas recognized by the local population has also been key in this process.

From now on, a new stage for the species begins, in which an ex situ program will work for its reintroduction in some historical locations from which it has disappeared. In this sense, it is relevant that, in Loro Parque Fundación alone, more than 60 copies have been born in recent years.

In total, the Foundation has allocated, since it began collaborating with this project, about $ 400,000 to protect the pechigrís parakeet. Thus, it has gone from counting about 100 copies to reach a thousand in 2019, changing the category of the species in the Red List of Endangered Species of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) of “critically endangered “To” in danger. “

Today, there are already more than 21,000,000 dollars that the Foundation has dedicated to supporting conservation projects, and the change of category in many of these ten species constitutes a worldwide conservation success that makes this organization without the intention of profit in the most effective in the preservation of tropical ecosystems through the protection of parrots.