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The Scarlet Macaw was once abundant and widespread throughout the Caribbean and Pacific lowlands of Costa Rica. Over the past forty years, habitat destruction, hunting, and trapping of parrots and macaws for the pet trade has significantly decreased their numbers. Today, Scarlet Macaws exist in isolated locations in Costa Rica. Curú National Wildlife Refuge in Guanacaste contains an established population of Scarlet Macaws through reintroduction in 1999.
Curú contains 1496 hectares of tropical dry deciduous forests, tropical moist forests, mangroves, beaches, marine habitats, pastures, and plantations. The dry deciduous forests and the tropical moist forests along the rivers and drainages contain some of the most endangered habitats in Central America. Amigos de las Aves and Curú NWR are working together not only to restore the endangered Scarlet Macaw to the area, but to use the Scarlet Macaw as a flagship species for conservation, where its presence and draw to eco-tourists will create added incentives to protect its endangered habitats.
The specific objectives of the project are:
1) To evaluate the foraging ecology, diet, and food resource availability of the established macaws,
2) To evaluate the movement patterns and habitat usage through observations and tracking several macaws with radio or satellite telemetry,
3)To evaluate nesting parameters and nesting success at natural and artificial nests.
This study is the first comprehensive research project for a reintroduced population of Scarlet Macaw that identifies food availability and habitat usage. The collection and analysis of data on this project will be used to answer the following question: does the variability in spatial and temporal food resource availability influence habitat usage and movement patterns of the Scarlet Macaw in CurúNWR? Determining the answer to this question will lead to a greater understanding of food resource availability, Scarlet Macaw foraging ecology, and whether the area will limit the population size of macaws.
Of the surviving 9 macaws from 13 originally released, 8 have formed pairs. One of the pairs, comprised of captive-bred, hand-raised birds, bred successfully in the wild in 2004 and fledged two young from the nest. Twenty-five tree species have already been documented as part of the Scarlet Macaw diet in Curú NWR, and seeds, fruits, flowers, leaves, bark and lichen are all eaten by the macaws, although they prefer the first two items. Along the beaches of the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, including in Curú NWR, the Scarlet Macaw’s favourite food item is the beach almond Terminalia catappa.
The project is unable to use satellite tracking until the technological advances further miniaturise the transmitter units and make them sufficiently robust to resist damage by the birds. These “macaw-proof” transmitter units and antennas are currently under development by North Star Science and Technology, Inc., partly funded by LPF and Amiso de las Aves (USA), which is the overall funding partner for the project.
Financial support:€11,100