Animal Trafficking, Amaru, and The National Aviary: International Conservation Efforts

Captain's Log, Day 101: Two weeks out of Ecuador, it is dawning on me that I won't, and don't intend to, ever be terribly far from the country again. Though talking to Ernesto, Fabian, and my friends from Yarina and Cuenca over the internet can't hold a candle to actually living in Ecuador with them, I can still be involved from far away. We've been talking a lot at the National Aviary about what we can do to further our connections with Amaru, and how we could expand our conservation efforts in Ecuador....

...for example, our work with Andean Condors. Amaru is being offered two juvenile males to start a breeding and education program, and the Aviary, in hopes of starting such a program anew (we used to have one with Colombia), has acquired a breeding pair from another zoo. Andean condors are extremely endangered in Ecuador, so any help we can provide to their ailing population would make a difference. A breeding program like this, paired with new falconry program and education outreaches by Amaru, could change a lot about how Condors are treated and protected around Cuenca.

One of the juvenile males who may be moving to Amaru. Thanks for the photo, Ernesto!

The day of release for the Andean Condors at the National Aviary! 

Lurch and Precious are their names. This is Lurch, the male Condor. Check out that cool crest. 

A more pressing concern for Amaru at the moment, though, may be the problems with animal trafficking in Ecuador.

Meet Martin, one of the three monkeys brought to us by the environmental ministry in my last week at Amaru. His owner of seven years found that he didn't want to care for him any longer, and gave him up. His story is fairly common around here...though we have to wonder how many pet animals are released into the wild instead. With parrots, release is extremely common. 

This baby Chorongo was also brought to us. The ministry estimates that it's only about a month old. We don't have any primate formulas to speak of available to us, so we were feeding it pedialyte and soymilk. 

She'll need round-the-clock supervision and care for quite a while now. When she was seized out of a bag at the bus station by the ministry, she was completely emaciated. 

She'll be living with Ernesto's sister here at Amaru. We'll try our best to give her a better home here, but there isn't ever going to be a replacement for what she'd get from her mother in the wild. 

Three new primates. We aren't equipped to be a high-class primate rescue center; we don't have that kind of support. What we really need at Amaru is a way to slow animal trafficking and raptor hunting in the area so that we aren't constantly having to expand our holding areas to accommodate all our new intakes.

Enter Fabian Toral of Fundacion Mazan and the Environmental Ministry.

Fabian not only has ideas about a Cuenca-wide education program about animal trafficking in schools, but he also has ideas about converting traffickers into animal breeders, and educating the public about the difference between domestic and wild animals. This book is one that he developed for a program in Cuenca schools. Now, the city tells him he needs funding to back the program before 

If we were able to educate the public on the difference between so called "domestic" species and "wild" species, we may be able to save more birds like this little parrotlet, taken from the nest to be sold in a public market. 

If you recall from previous blog posts, Fabian is involved with Aviary Pumapungo in Cuenca. Most of the raptors seized by the ministry around Cuenca are now going to Amaru, but since June 2012, Pumapungo has taken in 151 wild birds of 29 wild species, and 23 individuals of 7 "exotic or domestic" species. The majority of these species have been parrots. When you add in Amaru's additional 200-some parrot individuals and dozen raptors acquired in the last year, and consider that this is only Cuenca, and that the vast majority of trafficked animals die in the trade or are released/mistreated to their ends...trafficking is still a huge problem down here.

Below is the species list of all of those trafficked parrot species brought through Cuenca. Credit and thanks to Fabian Toral of the Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture and Patrimony. 

WILD BIRDS

No.	Scientific Name	Spanish common name
1	Dendrocygna bicolor	Pato Silvón Canelo
2	Buteogallus meridionalis	Gavilán Sabanero
3	Geranoaetus melanoleucus	Aguila Pechinegra
4	Buteo polyosoma	Gavilán Variable
5	Ortalis guttata	Chachalaca Jaspeada
6	Penelope purpurascens	Pava Crestada
7	Porphyrula martinica	Gallareta Purpúrea
8	Ara ararauna	Guacamayo Azuliamarillo
9	Ara ambigua	Guacamayo Verde Mayor
10	Ara macao	Guacamayo Escarlata
11	Ara severa	Guacamayo Frenticastaño
12	Aratinga erythrogenys	Perico Caretirrojo
13	Aratinga wagleri	Perico Frentiescarlata
14	Aratinga leucophthalmus	Perico Ojiblanco
15	Aratinga weddellii	Perico Cabecioscuro
16	Brotogeris pyrrhopterus	Perico Cachetigrís
17	Brotogeris versicolurus	Perico ala de canario
18	Pionus menstruus	Loro Cabeciazul
19	Pionus sordidus	Loro Piquirrojo
20	Pionus chalcopterus	Loro Alibronceado
21	Amazona autumnalis	Amazona Frentirroja
22	Amazona ochrocephala	Amazona Coroniamarilla
23	Amazona amazonica	Amazona Alinaranja
24	Amazona farinosa	Amazona Harinosa
25	Semnornis ramphastinus	Barbudo Tucán – Yumbo
26	Ramphastos swainsonii	Tucán de Swainson
27	Ramphastos tucanus	Tucán Goliblanco
28	Molothrus oryzivorus	Vaquero Gigante
29	Dives warszewiczi	Negro Matorralero
	Domestic or exotic birds
No.	Scientific name	Spanish common name
1	Anas platyrhynchis	Pato doméstico
2	Pavo cristatus	Pavo Real
3	Nymphicus hollandicus	Cacatua Ninfa
4	Agapornis roseicollis	Inseparables Carirrojos
5	Agapornis personata	Inseparable enmascarado
6	Melopsittacus undulatus	Periquito Australiano
7	Paroaria coronata	Cardenal Gris

This little Forpus coelestis would really appreciate anti-trafficking efforts.

Because a wild life would likely be a better life. Isn't that right, little guy?
As tasty as that quinoa Fabian is feeding you is...

During my time in Cuenca, I was able to visit the Centro Commercial with Fabian to see how he goes about seizing trafficked animals. The Centro Commercial is the largest open market in Cuenca, and the majority of the animals seized locally by the ministry are found here.

Fabian walking towards the market. The picture doesn't do it justice. It's huge. 

And they sell just about everything you could need or want for your house or farm here. 

There was one section of the market made up of stands that had live animals. When they saw Fabian and I coming through, there was a lot of shuffling and words exchanged between shop owners. They didn't want us to be there, and they definitely didn't want us to see what was going on there. We were told to leave by a handful of people. 

Cuy (guinea pigs), chickens, and other "food" animals were the most visible animals being sold on this side of the market...

But there were less identifiable noises coming from other boxes and bags around the large wire cages for the food animals.

More identifiably pet-type animals are grouped together regardless of species: here there were dogs, cats, and rabbits in one cage. 

The cages are often just made of wire, and aren't equipped with water or much feed. Lots of deaths result over the course of a market day under these conditions. 

Beyond the cages, there are the parrot squawks coming from burlap bags, wooden or cardboard boxes, or from under tarps. Fabian says that if you came to one of these store owners with a parrot request, they could most likely find you the species you want to buy. Since Fabain are primarily bird-oriented, we didn't speak too much about how this applies to trafficked mammals. I imagine it might be similar. 

I had to take most of the pictures quickly and discreetly from inside my jacket, so apologies for the quality. They hid most of the illegal animals when they heard Fabian was close, anyway. 

Bags and crates behind cages like these hold the animals that are illegal to sell. This includes all the animals you've seen in my previous Amaru posts...

...but dogs, cats, rabbits, domesticated fowl, exotic birds like budgies and cockatiels are legal to sell. 

Though there are laws about what you can and can't sell, there aren't too many laws about how you sell aforementioned animals. Few to none of these laws are enforced successfully. 

Really hard to convey all the noises, heat, waste, and smells...it's just not pretty. 

Fabian's current mission is to get the environmental ministry more involved in posting anti-trafficking notices around these markets. He also wants to convince current traffickers to join a coalition of educators and pet breeders who will try to fill the ever-growing demand for companion animals while animal welfare and conservation education is made more available to the public. 

We drove home two women who are now breeding Canaries. Fabian is convinced that this conservation issue is, at heart, a social problem--and he's right. The traffickers do what they do because they desperately need the money, and aren't able to access an education that may get them other places. These problems are as complicated as the oil issues in the Amazon...

The fact that these species are all dwindling dangerously in the wild, though, means that if we don't act they are likely to be lost forever. 

Fabian and I sure don't want to see them disappear from the Ecuadorian skies. 

Or from Ecuadorian rivers. There are few species that are safe when so many of Ecuador's animals are considered "charismatic," "beautiful," or even "entertaining." Any education program like Fabian's that could foster a greater respect for wildlife and each species' role in the upkeep of the world's ecosystems...

...could save hundreds or thousands of individuals. The animals of Pumapungo and Amaru are all incredible, irreplaceable species native to Ecuador and South America...and they could really use some help.

If you'd like to learn more about animal trafficking or how you can support the direct efforts of Fabian and Ernesto in Ecuador, you can contact me at nbecich@gmail.com. There's a lot of work to be done down there...

Stay tuned for more updates about how Amaru, Pumapungo, and The National Aviary are working together to bolster conservation initiatives in the near future. 

Cheers, all. 

The Birds of Ecuador.

Captain's Log, Day 95: 428 bird species in 82 days. Of these, 317 were "life list" species (birds I had not previously seen in North or Central America). There are nearly 1,700 bird species in Ecuador; which is a remarkable proportion of the estimated 10,000-some species of birds species in the world. It's incredible to me that a country about twice the size of my home state, Pennsylvania, can offer such mind-blowing biodiversity. About as incredible as the realization that there's now another country I feel I could someday call home.

Yarina Amazon evenings. Amaru Andean mornings. Mindo mid-afternoons.

It's hard to convey why certain places (or certain birds, for that matter) leave what becomes a lasting impression--harder still to express how crucial their inspiration is to fueling conservation work. The hours I've spent seeking out the Blue Seed-eaters, Red Barbets, and Dugand's Antwrens are so necessary to the work I do in-between the birding. It's near impossible to explain this necessity if the audience is unfamiliar with that singular rush of reverent wonder. It has been incredibly rewarding to realize that my mentors down here feel the same need to devote time to that primal appreciation of natural wonder. It's a part of our job that's as necessary as all the rehabilitation, research, and education of the public.

People have asked me since I said goodbye to Ecuador (nearly two weeks ago, now...goodness) what my favorite bird sighting was. Well, curious friends, I tried at first to list the ten most spectacular birds (impossible), then the ten birds I felt closest to or had previously worked with (see previous post about birds and conservation in October archives)...before settling on a list of ten birds that I wrote about the most in my journals (realizing quickly I couldn't write about just ten of them, so I beg your patience with this list of fifteen instead).

Even though I wrote about these birds often, I can't really call that a proper theme for this list. These are  really just some of the magnificent birds I met in Ecuador; just a fraction of the species that I'll be grateful to have seen in my lifetime when some of them disappear. Or to dedicate parts of my life to helping keep around.

An anecdote and a (google image found! Sorry my Canon Powershot doesn't measure up) picture of each.

My friend Eduardo pointed out the Great Potoo to me on my first hike at Yarina. The one we saw was snowier: roosting motionless against a Bombax tree with purpling flowers. I saw this bird every single day I was at Yarina, and if you asked me, I may say it was my favorite. A few nights when we didn't have any activities planned, I would sit with my feet dangling off the raised walkway in the swamp pathway across from that Bombax tree, sky darkening, and wait for it to take off. Nightjars have a particular power over me. I love this bird.

It seemed like whenever we were in an observation tower at Yarina, the Gilded Barbets were there, and I was always the first to spot them. Whether we were in the four-story, hilltop tower that looked over two bends of the Napo, sweeping over the canopies full of Dacnises, Flowerpiercers, Euphonias, Tanagers (and the occasional Black-throated Mango), or in Sapo Cocha, Yarina's protected lagoon, they were always there, and I would always get super excited about them.

The Cream-colored Woodpecker. It's so YELLOW. One would think that with eight or nine separate sightings each week at Yarina, I would have seen this one rather quickly.  Not so. It took me until I began learning calls from my Quechua friend Wilson at the end of my second week to realize that there was a little guy in the tree directly behind my cabin each day. We had a good laugh over that one, and I started visiting him daily...when we were no longer nemeses. 

Blue-headed Parrots. My first encounter with a live Blue-headed Parrot occurred on my first day at Yarina as well: 'Azulita,' one of the three resident rescue parrots, lived in the walls of my cabin and peeked through the boards at me or joined me in the shower. Seeing them in flight over the Ecuadorian lowlands and knowing that Azulita would probably never be part of a flock again was unspeakably heartbreaking; arriving at Amaru, where there were two dozen Blue-headed parrots in quarantine, was even worse. They're incredibly expressive, these guys. The joy with which they responded to basic enrichment after being confined without something to do for so long was incredible...the memories I have of them are definitely some of the strongest fuel for the anti-trafficking education efforts I want to make.

There's a Spangled Cotinga named Cory at the Aviary, and a volunteer who's exceptional with birdcalls. His name is George, and he knows the chips, chirps, and songs of every single bird we have at the Aviary (over 200 species)...except the Spangled Cotinga. So when Jaima Grefa called out from the canoe in front of me that there was a Spangled Cotinga calling and that we should stop to look for it, I was ecstatic. I wish George could have been there with us to see the flash of scarlet and neon turquoise through the trees.

Out of the Amazon and into the Andes: the Blue-mantled Thornbills at Cajas National Park. I spent a half an hour at the entrance to the park watching three or four of these little guys chase one another around with their wide black swallowtails. Sometimes they would appear to be sitting on the GROUND, which was absolutely bizarre...really they were getting at some of the low-set paramo flowers. The flash of neon green under their throats when they'd perch and hit the sun coming up over the hills...ahh, colibri magic.

I have a particular affinity for OBNOXIOUSLY LOUD GROUNDBIRDS. This Tawny Antpitta (click here for the xeno canto call), and the Pacific Hornero in Mindo, were just so BOLD. You could hear them from across a windy valley in Cajas; their calls even permeated some meters into the thick Polylepsis woodlands. They are a laugh out loud bird: I can't help but grin or supress snorting laughter when they puff up and yell. A guide at Cajas told me they call them "cha-chaus" for the noise they make. Little cha-chaus. Yee.

This, to Cuencans, is the Chugo. To english-speakers with Birds of Ecuador guides, it is the Southern Yellow Grosbeak, and it is everywhere around Cuenca. These guys would light my uphill trek to Amaru every morning once I'd gotten off the bus. They were such characters: wide eyes, always curious about what I was doing climbing their hill so early in the morning. I miss them. 

This is a bird of pure majesty. Aguila monera, said the members of the Environmental Ministry on the phone to us: a monkey-eating eagle, like the Harpy. This is a Black-and-Chestnut Eagle juvenile like the one we received at Amaru during my time there. The adults are black and chestnut brown with an unmistakable crest: I had the fortune to see one during my journey to Cuenca. The Waorani respect these eagles as minor Gods. If you ever come face to face with one, you'll know why. 

Into the cloud forest. Out of all the tanagers I saw in Mindo (with a quick check of my list, that's twenty-one species), the Flame-faced Tanager was the one that left me the most breathless. There was a particular bend in the cowpath down to Reserva Las Tangaras (aptly named) that was always host to a huge multispecies flock: Red-faced spinetails and Spotted Woodcreepers, flowerpiercers, the omnipresent bush tanagers, brush finches, warblers and tanagers. I'd always take time to seek these guys out in the multitude. Absolutely stunning. 

When I first heard the call of the Club-winged Manakin in Mindo, it reminded me of the metallic yawp of Monteverde's Three-wattled Bellbird in Costa Rica; thinner and more synthetic (listen to it here.) There were two separate leks of these guys on the same Las Tangaras cowpath; the males especially bold in the mid-afternoon, for whatever reason. Manakins are always so fun to watch...the dances and songs and pomp. I made sure to sit on the path and take them in for a full hour on my last day. 

People who hung out with me in Mindo would get sick of me telling people that this was a (same wording each time) "un-be-LIEVABLY massive swift-" that, moreover, "sounds like a PARROT or something." White-collared swifts. They really are massive, and they really DO sound something like parrots. I could see them from my hammock on the second floor of the station; they rose above the porch and the river each day, getting high enough to get us to wonder what they were really up to way up there, imagining that the selection of insects was rather poor at their altitude. Andrew and I ended up finding out where they roosted (or nested) on my last day on the reserve, in a stretch of the Rio Nambillo we wanted to name "The Temple" for its awe-inspiring stillness--tall, even canyon walls and stilled water, strong current leading forward to a waterfall amphitheater. 

I had to have these guys on the list. The Andean Cock-of-the-Rock; birds banded by Dusti Becker and Life Net Nature volunteers for station managers and volunteers to monitor year-round at their daily morning lek. Wheezing, dipping, beak-clapping males of the brightest red, their velvety black and white wings outstretched, yelling for the ladyfolk for hours each and every day. The most vivid images I have of them in memory? The first time I made it up to the lek, I wasn't yet familiar with the heavy wingbeats and beak-clicks; it was before five and still dark, and I didn't realize they were flying between treetops right above me. A few beak-clicks turned into a few wheezing 'yheeeeews' (me, pointing my binoculars desperately at each sign of movement, wondering what the noises could be and how much further the lek was), and through some silent accord twenty minutes later, they all EXPLODED in song, and the dance began. We would see them sometimes in the evening, flying over the Rio Nambillo and off into the forest; there are studies that say that their nests and roosts are almost always less than 40m from water.  They're hilarious, they're captivating, they're strangely wonderful and I am grateful I got to work with them. 

MOTMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT! This one will always make me laugh. One of the station managers was under the impression our resident Rufous Motmot at Las Tangaras responded to a high-pitched calling of its name. Maybe it did, or maybe it was just always around. We'd sit on the porch, watching the swifts and hummingbirds at the feeders--the woodcreepers in the trees, and the Motmot preening indifferently on a perch not ten meters away. He was magnificent. 

Finally, I present to you the first out of ten bucket-list birds I have successfully found in the wild: the Lyre-tailed Nightjar. I had to get the advice of three different ornithologists and guides in Mindo, spend six nights walking the hills in the search, and three hours my second-to-last night in Mindo to get a glimpse of that bafflingly long tail moving across the night sky. Such a MYSTERY, that bird. I told you previously that Nightjars have a strange power over me: this one, as the King of Nightjars, has the most. As with all the birds on this list (and in general, really), I feel so incredibly fortunate to have had the chance to see one in my lifetime. Hats off to you, Lyre-tailed Nightjar. The rush of being in your presence is beyond compare. 

This is why avian conservation is my calling. People ask me why I'm so enchanted with birds, and I can't -really- explain, but maybe some of these anecdotes help shed some light. With the unrelenting pace of habitat destruction, the largely unhindered trafficking of exotic species, and environmental shifts brought by climate change, more and more of the birds of Ecuador are disappearing each year, and we aren't doing enough to stop it.

If you're interested in learning more about bird conservation in the Americas, check out the American Bird Conservancy (click here) or the National Aviary. The Aviary and Amaru are teaming up and planning ways to support new avian conservation efforts, such as an Andean Condor breeding, research, and education program. The Andean Condor is one of Ecuador's national icons; despite this, there are now estimated to be less than 30 pairs remaining throughout the country.

Maybe we can do something to change that. 

Whaddaya say, Lurch? (New Andean Condor arrival for the breeding program at the National Aviary). 

Cheers, all. 

-Nikki