Priorities for Future Research

TRANSLOCATIONS (Reestablishment efforts)

 

Planning the idea of translocation

Around 2005, ten years after the first intensive surveys done in Mexico of Thick-billed Parrots, emerged interest in the idea of recovering the wild populations of the northern range of the species, this including increasing the northern population of the actual range in Mexico, and reestablishing populations in the historic range.

What the research team had as a background was the poor results from the use of captive bred parrots, and the good results obtained using wild-caught birds for release in Arizona in the 1980s. With that began the plan for a new strategy of reintroduce Thick-bills into the US, using wild parrots taken from the breeding range in Chihuahua, Mexico.

The initiative of the idea was leadership by the team work of the ITESM and Pronatura, and the plans was solidified following the first meeting with experts on parrots in general and those with experience with Thick-billed Parrots in particular. The main goal of that meeting at the end of 2005 was to plan the best ways of how to carry out this project with the goals of obtaining better results and with minimizing the impact on the species.

Nowadays, translocations of Thick-bills seems to be a reality this 2007, and hopefully this will be the beginning of a new and successful kind of strategy for conservation of the species. This method allows the increase of habitat use and therefore their distribution range, been this the main cause of extinction of the species, the loss of habitat.

Bi-national cooperation

Since the beginning of the Thick-billed Parrot Conservation Project in Mexico in the mid 1990s, there always has been mutual support between Mexico and the United States, as well as in expert researchers, NGOs, and Governments. Probably the strong interest is due the species once inhabit at the north from the border, but being totally eradicated since the 1950s; as mentioned in this document, it had been efforts to reestablish populations in US but with low success or even none. Therefore, bi-national cooperation continued for many years being most of the financial sources for the thick-bills conservation projects from the US, without hope maybe to have again the species in the north lands, but helping to protect and conserve what couldn’t be in the moment at the north.

Nowadays, emerge a new hope for the US of having back the species in its lands, and even with a highest boom of cooperation interest in both nations; translocations of wild parrots suggest a better choice for their reestablishment, and will emerge a new pride for Americans of having one more time the extinct species in the country living free in its mountains.

Mexican researchers, institutions, NGOs and government are strong involved again with US partners to try to get this out carefully and successfully, without this synergy, efforts could goes to the wrong way. Efforts had always been in pro of something, the Thick-billed Parrot survival.