More than 1,000 years ago archaeological evidence from the North American Southwest shows the Scarlet Macaw(Ara Macao) to have been important in the Native American society of the prehistoric people living in the Valley of the Mimbres, in present day New Mexico. The pottery for which the Mimbres people are famed show detailed scenes of daily life filled with the animals with which they shared their lands and depict Scarlet Macaws being transported to the Valley alive, being kept in aviaries, being trained, and being part of a captive breeding program. However, there is no evidence that the Scarlet Macaw was ever a native of Southwestern New Mexico but had to have been acquired from Mexico or Central America, where they were indigenous, at least 750 miles to the south. DNA tests have now shown that those ancient macaw bones are of a Southern Mexico lineage
In southeastern Costa Rica, from about1670 – 1710, lived an indigenous king named Pabru Presbere, whose name is said to mean “Chief of the Macaw, “the word “Pa” being the Bribri word for the big, beautiful, blue, red, yellow, and green birds, who legend says, followed Pabru where ever he went. When the Spaniards arrived in Costa Rica, they killed many macaws for their feathers and before long, killed Pabru as well. The story says that the “Pa” who were mostly red flew off to the Pacific Coast while the predominately green ones flew to the Caribbean Coast, the separation remaining to this day. The word for “the” in Spanish is “la” so Pabru’s beautiful bird became known as Lapa in Costa Rica.
Yet prior to Pabru’s reign, during the period from 300 – 500 ce, the Scarlet Macaw was considered a helper to Bribrishamans. It was one of four birds that formed a foundation for the “awa” – those who sang at funerals. A macaw was sacrificed at a funeral ritual for important people and the singer performed with Scarlet Macaw feathers in his hair and decorating his drum.
Dating from this same period of time, archaeologists have found a beautifully carved volcanic stone metate in the shape of a parrot – further evidence of the Scarlet Macaw’s presence and importance in pre-Columbian Costa Rica.
Time travel to the beginning of the 20th
Century, where the naturally occurring Scarlet Macaw lived and thrived in over
80% of Costa Rica, especially in the aforementioned lowlands of the Pacific and
Caribbean coasts. In Costa Rica it had access to the vast evergreen rainforest
and its trees, whose fruit it ate and in which it nested. However, urban growth,
slashing and burning the land for agriculture and raising cattle, which peaked
in 1985, destroyed much of the habitat necessary for the survival of the
Scarlet Macaw, while hunting for feathers and for the illegal pet trade added to
the bird’s declining numbers. Because land in certain areas had not yet become
attractive to those groups, the macaws found themselves squeezed into two
isolated remnants of their historic habitat- one in the Central Pacific Conservation
Area and the other to the south in the Osa Peninsula. This stunningly beautiful,
iconic rainforest bird, revered as powerful and supernatural in pre-historic
times, this important keystone species, who, with its powerful nut-cracking
beak played a vital role in maintaining a healthy and diverse tropical
ecosystem by carrying a variety of seeds from one locale to another, one of the
most charismatic animals in the country, was on its way to extinction –along
with its rainforest home – in CostaRica.
Travel forward in time again, if you will, almost to the end of the 20th century,
when a retiring gentleman from Italy, Alessandro Poma-Murialdo, pursued his
passion for parrots and learned about the importance of the Scarlet Macaw for the
culture and the ecosystem. Successfully raising and breeding them in a garden
near La Sabana, Costa Rica, he presented his idea to restock the population with
captive bred birds to the Ministry of Environment. Expanding his project, he
founded Parque San Francisco, a private center to facilitate the reproduction of
the Ara Macao – the Scarlet Macaw – to rescue other parrots from the wildlife
trade, and to care for the physical and behavioral recovery of the birds so that
they could be released eventually into the wild or transferred to other facilities.
November 2013 saw the inauguration of a project between Alessandro Poma and The Gaia Hotel & Reserve, whose mission was also to preserve the area’s beautiful flora and fauna – which was disappearing under the developers’ constant construction – by welcoming its first five transferred Scarlet Macaws from Alessandro Poma. GAIA soon set aside over 12 of its 14.1 acres of land in Manuel Antonio as a refuge for the protection of its native plants and wildlife.
In 2014, GAIA, Neotropical Parrots, located at Parque San Francisco, and various other organizations working on the conservation of the Scarlet Macaw came together to form ASOMACAO, anacronym for The Association of Friends of the Ara Macao, with a vision – in their words – “of becoming the leading organization for native parrots and macaws conservation in the Costa Rican Pacific.”
With the strength of this combined effort and with donations from its supporters, ASOMACAO has been able to undertake a larger scale conservation program, which includes macaw rescue and rehabilitation activities, captive breeding(with birds incapable of being returned to the wild), environmental education, and reforestation. Rescued birds maybe from owner surrender of pets held in captivity for years or may be those saved from the illegal trade of exotic animals, or from birds injured in the wild who need medical care. Incoming macaws reside in a quarantine cage to assess their health and ensure they carry no communicable diseases before being moved to a larger aviary, where they can socialize or recover, prior to release, if release is possible. Freed Scarlet Macaws – Lapas Rojas, as they are now known – are fed at outdoor feeding platforms raised high into the canopy, until they learn to forage on their own. Birds which cannot be released to the wild are carefully watched to see if they pair with another macaw, in which case the partners are moved into their own large cage and provided with a nest in hopes they will mate and produce offspring.
ASOMACAO believes involving communities is critical to re-establishing the Lapa Roja to its indigenous range in Costa Rica. Their teams of educators and naturalists have created programs for elementary school students to involve them in learning about the plants and animals that surround them, to teach them about the interdependence of life, and to help them understand the causes and effects of deforestation, and depend on the development of personal connections with the students to achieve these goals. Older students from nearby schools have been engaged as volunteers to help with maintenance work on the grounds or to prepare food for the macaws at Parque San Francisco. Yet other students from Mexico, France, Belgium, the USA, and the UK to date, have come to work as interns for ASOMACAO, helping to prepare food for the birds, assisting in the various school programs, interviewing people in small towns to learn if Scarlet Macaws are– or ever have been – seen, to follow the macaws to learn their routines and flight routes, and return to their countries carrying the message of conservation in Costa Rica. To build more community involvement, we rely on local people to feed our surveillance program with their sightings and comments.
ASOMACAO provided one of the teams in the fifth annual event, in 2018, of the Annual Bird Count at P. N. La Cangreja, which counted more than 300 different species. Information gathered by the teams of ornithologists, biologists, guides, photographers, and local community members counting the birds is used to aid decision making in managing and protecting flora and avifauna in the park and can reveal any changes in species’ populations. In fact, the count revealed the encouraging information that the original Scarlet Macaw population is expanding their range there. Further, community participation in the count fosters an interest in protecting a wild area. ASOMACAO would like to conduct a similar event in Quepos, counting specifically the Scarlet Macaw.
ASOMACAO was a sponsor of a bike race, held by Mountain Bike Recreation, for the benefit of the Paso De Las Lapas Biological Corridor. The Paso De Las Lapas, which plays a critical role in the return of the Scarlet Macaw to its indigenous range, is one of forty four biological corridors created by the government of Costa Rica, and connects an area of over 56,000 hectares to indigenous reserves and protected national parks between the Central Pacific coastline and the coastal mountain range and is used by Las Lapas daily as they fly from one area to the other.
There is still much work to be done with regard to breeding success, genetic diversity, and habitat quality to ensure the permanence of the Scarlet Macaw. With the continued efforts of ASOMACAO in rescuing, rehabilitating, and repopulating Scarlet Macaws, with the creation of more biological corridors, and with the work of a large number of groups conserving the treasure that is the flora and fauna of Costa Rica, the return of the Scarlet Macaw to its indigenous range has a greater chance of success now than ever before.
