What is the Spix’s Macaw Captive Breeding Facility?
Since the creation of the recovery effort more than a decade ago, effective, scientifically rigorous and conservation-oriented captive breeding has been the principal foundation of the goal to re-establish the Spix’s Macaw in its native habitat.
In the past, all Spix’s Macaws have been hatched thousands of miles away from its native habitat. To successfully reintroduce the Spix’s Macaws will require that the future breeding facility be situated “in situ”, in the natural habitat of the last Spix’s Macaw, the existing Spix’s Macaw Preserve.
What is the Spix’s Macaw Captive Breeding Facility?
The Breeding Aviary, an important part of the De-Extinction Facilities, will utilize the proven sophisticated housing, husbandry, feeding and health control protocols of the AWWP and ACTP, the partners of the Spix’s Macaw De-Extinction Project.
The fundamental captive breeding requirements to successfully reintroduce the Spix’s Macaw are:
- The captive Spix’s Macaw breeding season must be synchronized to the wild habitat. The hatching of chicks must coincide with the natural breeding biology of wild macaws within the release habitat.
- This ensures that the reintroduction of new young Macaws be synchronized with the normal fledging period in the wild, both for the Spix’s Macaw and for the conspecific parrots within the native release habitat. This greatly improves the success of the reintroduced parrots. The only means of synchronizing young Spix’s Macaws with the normal fledgling period is to breed them on site on the Spix’s Macaw Preserve.
- The reintroduced Spix’s Macaws must be young, with an optimal release age of 4-6 months (young birds most easily learn and adapt to the wild).
To this end, the Spix’s Macaws will be moved to a Breeding Facility that is contiguous to the reintroduction facility. This will allow for common scientific staff, employees, support facilities, and veterinary facilities.
The “in situ” breeding facility allows synchronization of the Spix’s Macaws with the variables that will affect their success and survival upon release in to the wild (via the soft release reintroduction from the facility into the surrounding habitat). These variables include: habitat variability; climatic variability; seasonal food source availability; water availability; and seasonal variations in natural predators and competitors.
In addition to providing birds for reintroduction purposes, the aim of the Spix’s Macaw Re-Introduction Project is to maintain a genetically and demographically viable back-up population and gene pool, on a long-term basis. These back-up populations will remain at facilities in Germany and Qatar.
Design
Design of Breeding and Release Facilities
The Holders have long term experience in planning and construction of breeding facilities as demonstrated by the pictures of their existing facilities. The below floor plans represent preliminary architectural plans of the future breeding and reintroduction facilities.