- In an unprecedented project in the municipality of São Simão, blue-and-yellow macaws born in captivity were trained in free-flight techniques before being introduced into the wild.
- Traditionally, in psittacine reintroduction projects, captive chicks are only released into the wild at 2 or 3 years of age; with no experience in finding food or defending themselves against predators, many end up dying.
- According to the project’s coordinators, the initiative could signal a new method to be used in parrot and macaw reintroduction programs, offering lower costs and higher chances of success.
“I remember my grandfather telling me about the macaws in this region. So, it’s impossible not to smile seeing them back. We know where they sleep and feed, so every time we want to find them, we know where they are,” says biologist Humberto Mendes, a professor at the Federal University of Alfenas in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state.
Alongside Donald Brightsmith, a professor at Texas A&M University (USA) and one of the world’s leading experts on Psittaciformes (parrots), and Chris Biro, considered an international reference in free-flight training for pet birds, the Brazilian led a project to reintroduce canindé macaws (Ara ararauna) in São Simão, in northwestern São Paulo state, Brazil, an area where the blue-and-yellow plumaged species used to exist in the past but became locally extinct more than 50 years ago.
What is so pioneering about this release is the technique used: free flight with psittacines, never before employed in conservation programs. And, more than that, the excellent result obtained: a 100% success rate. “This result is absolutely wonderful! And I’m not exaggerating. I say that even though I’m a grumpy old scientist,” Brightsmith jokes as he celebrates the project’s success.
Just over two years after the initial release of the six canindé macaws in 2022, all of them are still alive and showing great adaptation. And in that time, they have also been put through their paces, literally. They survived a fire that hit the region in the second half of 2024, when much of Brazil suffered from wildfires.
For the project in São Simão, two males and four females were selected, all chicks, bought from breeders authorized by Brazil’s federal environmental agency, Ibama. During their training, they were accompanied by three other adult birds of the same species, familiar with the free-flight technique, so they could learn to fly and behave in flocks.
Traditionally, in psittacine reintroduction projects, chicks born in captivity are released into the wild when they reach a certain age, around 2 or 3 years old.
“If you raise an animal in a cage until it’s 2 or 3 years old, it will hardly know how to defend itself from predators or look for food because it’s being provided. It won’t have any navigational skills. And then you open the door to the enclosure and they have to find their way around in an environment they don’t know. And that’s the biggest problem conservation programs face when releasing birds into the wild,” Biro says. “It’s as if you raised a teenager all his life in a closed room and then suddenly released him into a crowded shopping mall,” he compares.
“When they are raised in captivity, in a closed environment, these animals are even afraid of the sun. They’re afraid of the wind, of butterflies flying, of falling leaves. There are lots of things we can’t imagine, but they can cause a phobia and these animals can fly off in desperation,” Mendes adds.
And that’s where the big difference lies with free flight. Not that the technique is new; on the contrary. It is very similar to falconry, which has been used for millennia to train birds of prey through what is known as “operant conditioning,” a process that involves offering a reward (food) for each task performed. In recent decades, however, it has become popular among domestic psittacine breeders.
For the method to be successful, however, the birds need to be trained at a very young age, between 90 days and 120 days old.
“We use a mobile cage, and as soon as the chicks have the slightest ability to fly, we encourage them to jump between two points to be fed. Little by little, we increase the distance. Then we fly them out of the aviary and back again,” Biro explains.
As well as encouraging longer flights, the training gradually includes an increasingly scarce food supply and a change in the time of day, forcing the macaws to look for food in the wild. And also, the breaking of ties with humans.
“Within two weeks, the canindés were already flying normally, like free-living individuals. Their instincts were being developed for the natural environment and not that of a cage,” the trainer says.
A new reintroduction alternative
Brightsmith, Mendes and Biro say they believe the success of the study carried out with the canindé macaw in Brazil could signal a new method to be used in parrot and macaw reintroduction programs. They report the results of the experiment in a scientific article in the journal Birds.
By comparison, for example, a reintroduction project for blue macaws (Cyanopsitta spixii) being carried out in Curaçá, Bahia, Brazil, in which 20 birds were released in 2022, only 10 remained in the wild. Among the others, some disappeared, others were killed by predators and one had to return to the aviary because of its behavior. This represents a 50% success rate.
“We’re looking at a couple of decades of scientific parrot release projects where, in most cases, when you open the cage, the release is final,” Brightsmith says. “Often they fly for miles and end up getting lost, there are problems with predators or a whole host of other issues with traditional methods. With this technique, you’re putting them in the right environment, socially and physically, at the right time in their development. And by doing this, the natural tendency to develop appropriate behaviors works.”
He explains that, at 3 months old, canindé macaw chicks are already beginning to explore the world beyond the nest, making their first flights, still accompanied and under the protection of their parents. However, in the traditional release method, they will only be released much later.
For him, the way psittacines are usually released has a problem at its core: They are taught to be caged birds and then there is an expectation that they will become wild animals.
Another advantage of the free-flight technique is the much lower cost, the study’s authors argue. “Some programs spend thousands, even millions, of dollars raising parrots in captivity, only to discover that these birds can’t survive in the wild because they don’t have enough experience in the real world,” the Texas A&M professor says.
The same method was also used in Colombia in 2023. Around 20 true parrots (Amazona aestiva) were confiscated by the police and handed over to a local organization, Fundación Loros. Biro went there, trained them and after two weeks, they were released into the wild.
Those involved in the Brazilian project say they believe that free flight could be a new conservation option for the reintroduction of birds in cases such as the one above, for seized chicks or for those born in captivity, whether in zoos, research institutions or breeding grounds.
Mendes reveals that there are now plans for a new study with smaller birds that are more vulnerable to predation, such as the maracanã-nobre (Diopsittaca nobilis). “Our aim is to prove the efficiency of the technique with different sizes and species of psittaciformes.”
The researchers’ hope is that the use of the technique and its wider dissemination among conservation specialists will enable more birds to fly freely in the skies, especially in places where certain species have become extinct, as is currently the case in São Paulo’s countryside, with the return of the canindé macaw.
Imagem do banner: Araras-canindé durante treinamento de voo livre. Foto: Chris Biro.
This story was first published here in Portuguese on Feb. 3, 2025.
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