This unorthodox method is saving baby parrots from extinction

For biologist Diego Noriega, the sleepless nights begin in March. During breeding season at Mexico’s Chajul Biological Station, he sets his alarm clock every two hours, each time going to the maternity lab with a flashlight to prepare the formula. He then takes the babies out of the incubators to feed them.

These newborns are scarlet macaw chicks—at times just a few days old, still naked and rosy without the distinct red, blue, and yellow feathers that will grow in over the coming weeks. They’re not orphans, but rather rescues: When poachers close in on a nest, scientists extract the fledglings and raise them until they can return to the wild.

Though scarlet macaws live throughout Latin America, their Mexican subspecies, Ara macao cyanoptera, is endangered, with only about a thousand individuals remaining in the wild. This flashy bird once painted the country’s skies red along the Gulf of Mexico, from the U.S. border to Guatemala. (Read: Have parrots become too popular for their own good?)

But the rainforest has drastically shrunk over the decades, and macaws are left with just 20 percent of their original range. In addition to habitat loss, the parrots are declining due to the illegal wildlife trade, which removes about a hundred individuals—mostly chicks—a year from their natural habitat in Mexico.

Since 2005, Noriega has led the Scarlet Macaw Protection, Conservation and Reintegration Program to preserve the largest population, which survives in Chiapas State’s Lacandon rainforest, in and around the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve.

So far, the program, run by the Mexico City-based nonprofit Natura y Ecosistemas Mexicanos (NEM), has rescued 200 chicks and successfully released them back into the wild. (Watch a film about how the nonprofit is saving scarlet macaws.)

“When I see them fly, I just feel proud to have accomplished that,” says Noriega.

“Because I know that without our intervention, they would have ended up very badly—in the best of scenarios, in a cage somewhere; and in the worst, dead along the way.”

The Amazon of Mexico

Scarlet macaws are intelligent and charismatic birds, captivating for their stark colors, elegant flight, and raucous chatter. Though the tropical species has a long history as pets, in recent decades an illegal black market has expanded.

This global network uses powerful organized crime groups to target 4,000 animal and plant species, according to the UN’s 2024 World Wildlife Crime Report. Parrots and cockatoos are among the most sought-after animal species, making up 2 percent of illegal trade, according to the report.

Though buying and selling scarlet macaws is illegal in Mexico, the legislation lacks enforcement. Selling nestlings to illegal traffickers, which then sell the birds to clients abroad, is an easy source of income for some local people.

Without government enforcement, “we do what is in our power, which is to take the chicks, grow them ourselves, and raise awareness among the community,” says Julia Carabias, a NEM board member and a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Faculty of Science.

There are only two remnant populations of scarlet macaws in Mexico, but one of them, with only around 20 individuals in the Chimalapas region, is considered too small to be viable. So the nonprofit focuses on the last healthy population, which thrives around the Lacantun River Basin, within the Lacandon rainforest, which includes more than 20 percent of Mexico’s biodiversity.

The rainforest is also home to the Lacandones, a Maya people who have become important partners in its protection. The nonprofit, NEM, works closely with these communities to raise awareness about the vital role of macaws, for instance as seed dispersers. (Related: This bird's protectors are its former hunters.)

The NEM also offers training for the Lacandones to develop ecotourism projects, which ultimately is more profitable than poaching or destroying the forest to farm, says Carabias.

“This is part of a wider program to protect this ecosystem. Without it, we’d have no macaws, jaguars, tapirs, or all the biodiversity here,” she says.

“This is the Amazon of Mexico, and our main task is to protect it.”

Dramatic rescues

Scarlet macaws, which live up to 50 years in the wild, are monogamous birds that nest in large cavities of the tallest and oldest trees. As long as these nests remain available and undisturbed, macaw pairs use the same sites year after year.

But this behavior makes them vulnerable to poachers, which sometimes build permanent infrastructure, such as wooden ladders, to climb up and pluck chicks—usually two or three in a clutch—from their nests.

“Our aim is not to confront these people, who are usually armed. It’s a competition to get to the nesting sites first,” says Noriega. (Learn how poaching is destroying wild populations of the African gray parrot.)

Local landowners and NEM monitors keep track of nesting sites and report when there is a family inside. If there is high risk of looting—for instance, if it the nests have been raided in the past or if there is poacher-built infrastructure—the team will intervene and remove the chicks.

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Each year, the team raises several dozen chicks at the biological station, releasing them after they’re about 90 days old and start taking their first flights with other macaws. Before returning to the wild, the birds are fitted with leg rings and a microchip, which allows scientists to monitor them over time.

A positive impact

The NEM program is smart, says conservationist Patricia Escalante, because by saving the chicks, the scientists keep the existing Lacandon population from aging, allowing it to renew itself naturally.

Ideally, chicks would be raised by their parents, but that’s not always realistic. “It’s a dilemma. Breeding pairs are the best parents, but there is no surveillance against poachers,” says Escalante, who in 2014 founded a program to reintroduce captive-bred scarlet macaws to Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve in Veracruz State, where they disappeared 50 years ago.

Escalante, a researcher at National Autonomous University of Mexico’s Biology Institute, says the project released 200 macaws into the wild between 2014 and 2018, of which around 75 percent survived. Since 2018, they started to breed naturally, and there are at least 10 chicks born to this new population every year.

Sam Williams, who runs the Macaw Recovery Network in Costa Rica, says NEM is achieving positive results without jeopardizing human safety.

“It’s evident to them that if they don’t protect the chicks, the nests are going to get robbed,” says Williams. (See how the illegal wildlife trade has moved online.)

“There have been projects that hired guards to keep watch over nesting sites, which is labor intensive and risky. [The nonprofit] found a relatively low-risk, non-confrontational way of tackling the problem. I applaud that.”

Learning to be a parrot

There is a downside to the NEM method, Williams says: Macaws are very social birds that pass knowledge down from one generation to the next, and separating babies from their parents can disrupt that cycle.

Noriega acknowledges his strategy is traumatic for the parrot parents, but they believe it is the only option to save the chicks. He adds that the parents that lose their chicks show no sign of being discouraged and seem to bounce back: If it’s early days in the breeding season, they may even lay a new clutch of eggs again.

The rescued chicks also mingle with a resident wild population of parrots that were raised at the Chajul Biological Station and like coming back to a familiar place.

“The fledglings follow the more experienced individuals, who teach them tips and tricks key to their survival and encourage them to take longer flights,” says Noriega.

“They may have lost their blood connection with their parents but will have a good life within their own species in their natural habitat.”