Abstract
The animals of South America belong to the neotropic realm of animal geography. There is a direct correlation between animals and the distribution of vegetation. So far in Brazil nature has dominated man, but this is rapidly changing with the building of the Amazon highway. As it makes it's way through the Amazon bringing industry along with it, many of the indigenous animals and plants will disappear and the present day Indian way of life will also change. Up to now the Indians have been living in harmony with nature. For centuries they kept parrots like we in America keep our dogs and cats. The Indians were training parrots to talk long before Columbus came to the New World.
The population of the Amazon is made up of basically two groups of people. First, Indian (other than Andean), and second, Mestizo (mixed European and Indian). In 1968 the majority of Brazil had between 0-4 people per square mile. With a few areas on the east coast with as many as 5-49. Food grown in this region by farmers consists of the following: banana, corn, flax, cassava (a tuber used to make a flourtype meal), sweet potatoes, rice, beans, peanuts, and Brazil nuts. Cattle is also a large industry, along with rubber products.
When Brazil decided to build the Amazon highway through the Amazon basin the ecologists panicked at the realization of what was to come.
"Brazil has decided to open the fabulous riches of the Amazon basin to development and industrialization. Its resources of energy and of mineral and economic wealth are enormous. The majority of Brazil's population is poor and the project will help the country become both prosperous and powerful. But the dense rain forests of the Amazon basin are the greatest reservoir of the earth's supply of life-sustaining oxygen and they provide shelter for hundreds of species of wildlife. Exploitation is therefore likely to cause far reaching and irreparable damage."
From Time-Life Books, Vanishing Species
It is difficult to explain to poor people the need to preserve wildlife. It is, therefore, more and more necessary that many wild animals be bred in captivity in order to survive. In fact, in the case of many animals including the macaws and other parrots, domesticating them, in the United States and else where in the world, has increased their chances for survival considerably.
A country is made up on an area ofland, the people who inhabit that land and natural resources (which includes fauna and flora). Most people view countries by how much land the country governs and how many people inhabit that land. Few people view countries by their animals and plants.
In South America the bird fauna is the richest in the world in both numbers and varieties of species. No other continent supports a bigger avifauna; 2,926 species have been recorded. It is understandable why South America is known as the Bird Continent.
Life Magazine in August of 1979 gives us many glimpses into life in South American jungles:
"But in the luxuriant rain forests of Brazil ... , where the equator really does live up to its sultry reputation, the proliferation of life is more riotous than anywhere else on earth. There, 100 different species of trees have been found crowded together on a single acre. Near the mouth of the Amazon, 76 different kinds of birds have been counted in the branches of a single tree.
Currently, the reclusive American billionaire Daniel Ludwig has been spinning the web of his industrial empire deep in the Amazon jungle ... At the mouth of the Amazon . . . waterlogged meadow that until recently was dense equatorial rain forest. Large-scale clearing along the Amazon is producing extensive grasslands that support a thriving cattle industry ... Brazil may benefit from the the cattle, but ecologists believe that the wholesale deforestation now in progress is resulting in mass extinction of wildlife, including many still undiscovered plant forms. Even worse, because of the huge area it covers, destroying the rain forest could upset the climate all over the world."
We cannot afford to lose anymore species of macaws than we already have. Many of the species need our captive breecting help in order to keep an already dwindling population from extinction. We cannot justify rare pet birds destined to spend their entire lives alone without breeding. We must see to it that we set up breecting colonies of rare wildlife from all over the world in order to insure that these species will not die out.
This need to breed wildlife in captivity has stimulated wildlife trusts, zoos and more and more private aviculturists to take the time to raise birds of all kinds. ln the not-so-far-off future, it will be these birds that will be a nucleus to be re-released into their native habitat when man realizes the beauty of wildlife and the benefits of nature.
In the July/ August 1979 International Issue of the Nature Conservancy News there is a brilliant article written by Paul Colinvaux titled Remembrances of a Rain Forest. In this article he quotes the following horrifying statistics compiled by the World Wildlife Fund:
"As of 1976, The MlNlMUM destruction rate of the Earth's tropical rain forest was:
27 MILLION ACRES PER AN-
~ NUM which equals
~ 74,468.5 acres per day
i:i' 3, JO 1 acres per hour
~ 50 acres per minute
£ The original area of rain forest was 15.92 ~ million square kilometers (6.2 million ff. square miles). ln 1975, it had been reduced to 9.35 million square kilometers (3.6 million square miles), a 40 percent reduction in our tropical rain forests."
Since the majority of parrots live in or depend on the rain forest to sustain their life, it is clear that we are pushing them to the brink of oblivion.
How can we help? We can continue to breed birds in captivity. Each time a single species of a family of birds dies out we lose a valuable link to what the family as a whole was like. We can't afford to wait until a bird is placed on the endangered species list to give it some help. We must foresee the problems the birds are facing and try to correct the problems as best we can. If we each specialize in one area...