BELÉM, Brazil — The golden parakeet is as noisy as it is brightly colored. Hanging from the branches above, three of these medium-sized parrots screech and squawk as they peer down to get a better look at biologist Marcelo Vilarta as he observes them. Also known as golden conures, they’re striking birds with their vibrant yellow plumage and green wingtips distinct against the Amazonian vegetation. Yet it’s these colors that have put their population at risk of extinction.

The illegal pet trade, coupled with acute habitat loss, have reduced the population of golden parakeets (Guaruba guarouba) to fewer than 10,000 wild individuals — a tiny number for a large biome like the Brazilian Amazon, the only place on Earth where they’re natively found. They occur mostly in the state of Pará, with records also in the states of Maranhão and Amazonas.

“There aren’t any other golden parakeets [naturally in the wild] in any other place in the world,” Vilarta tells Mongabay. He’s part of a golden parakeet reintroduction project supported by the Institute for Forest Development and Biodiversity (IDEFLOR-Bio), a Pará state agency, and the nonprofit Lymington Foundation.

The program began in 2017, with the first flock of golden parakeets released into the wild in January 2018 in Utinga State Park in Belém, the capital of Pará and the host city of the COP30 climate summit in 2025. In Belém, the birds had been locally extinct for more than 100 years. The inquisitive golden parakeets watching Vilarta from the tree are three of the 50 that have been released here so far.

“The idea of the project is to reduce the vulnerability of the golden parakeet population and create a new wild one here in an area where they were already extinct,” Vilarta says.

Caught for its plumage

The golden parakeet plays an important role in seed dispersal, especially for fruit trees such as nance (Byrsonima crassifolia) and açaí (Euterpe oleracea) as well as up to 21 other plants native to the Amazon. They’re currently threatened with extinction in the wild, although they remain fairly common in captivity. On both the IUCN Red List and Brazil’s own national classification, the species is categorized as vulnerable.

Habitat loss from deforestation and wildlife trafficking in particular continue to be significant threats to the golden parakeet. The illegal pet trade was more of a threat in the 1980s and 1990s, according to Luís Fábio Silveira, a curator of birds at the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Zoology (MZUSP), who works with the golden parakeet reintroduction project. But nowadays people breed golden parakeets in captivity, where “they can be legally acquired all over the world” from authorized breeders, he tells Mongabay.

Yet the demand for exotic and rare birds as pets, and the profits they bring, keeps the black market active.

“Wildlife trafficking is the third-largest illegal commercial activity in the world, second only to drugs and weapons,” Julia Trevisan, a biologist and wildlife coordinator at U.K.-based campaign group World Animal Protection, tells Mongabay. Buying trafficked birds can be cheaper than through legal channels, and traffickers are lured in by the potential high profits. A hyacinth macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus), for example, can fetch up to 90,000 reais (about $16,500), Trevisan said. An online search found websites selling golden parakeets for up to 13,000 reais (about $2,400). Most of the trafficked birds are sold within Brazil, but some go overseas to the U.S. and Europe.

Traffickers often capture golden parakeets by cutting down whole trees with nests in them and collecting the surviving chicks. It’s a devastating practice for the wild population. “The birds that survive can’t produce again because their nest was destroyed,” Vilarta says. “They need very specific tree cavities to make nests, and these are very rare to find.”

Protecting the species

The Lymington Foundation, based in São Paulo state, has successfully bred golden parakeets over the last 20 years to boost the species’ numbers, and in 2017 teamed up with IDEFLOR-Bio to reintroduce the species back into the wild, with the support of MZUSP. Belém was chosen for the reintroduction to bring back “a species to a place where it had already disappeared,” Vilarta says.

Utinga State Park in the heart of Belém is a conservation unit and the largest green space in the city, sprawling across an area of 1,393 hectares (3,442 acres) of largely preserved natural Amazonian environment, the golden parakeet’s preferred habitat. The area is guarded by both private security and public environmental police, reducing the possibility of trafficking and deforestation.

The program’s coordinators set up two aviaries in the middle of the park where 10 golden parakeets are currently being prepared to be reintroduced into the wild. Most have come from the breeding program at Lymington, but some were rescued from trafficking or from being kept as pets. Within the enclosures, the golden parakeets go through a period of adaptation and acclimatization, which takes at least five months.

The nursery has vegetation similar to what the golden parakeets will find in the wild, and they’re taught to recognize and consume local foods. They’re also trained to recognize predators, such as boa constrictors, with Vilarta and his team placing live snakes safely near their enclosure. The researchers then assess the golden parakeets’ reactions to the snakes, as well as to local birds of prey that hunt in the area, and give them a passing mark if they collectively emit alarm calls as the predators approach.

Environmental education for the wider public, especially at schools and universities and for park visitors, also plays a key role in long-term protection of the species. “The project has intensified its education to raise awareness of the importance of this species for the city of Belém, because it’s this bird that helps propagate the fruit species typical of our city,” Monica Furtado da Costa, biodiversity manager at Ideflor-Bio, tells Mongabay. Educational activities include distributing booklets about the golden parakeet to students, creating games for children, and hosting an exhibition about the species in Belém’s Porto do Futuro Park.

So far, the reintroduction program is working. A study published in 2021 about the project found that “the released birds were very successful in finding and consuming native foods, evading predators, and one pair managed to reproduce successfully.” The project has managed to reintroduce 50 individuals into the wild to date.

Despite the successes, reintroducing all the golden parakeets — especially the ones previously captured — isn’t always easy.

A female golden parakeet balances on the mesh netting inside the enclosure curiously watching Vilarta talking nearby and edges closer to him, showing little fear of people. He says she was once kept as a pet, raised illegally in Pará before the owner surrendered her for the project.

“You can even talk to her and she responds,” Vilarta says.

Another parrot clings to the netting nearby. Vilarta enters the cage, collects the bird using a long pole and places him near a nest box to shelter from the searing mid-morning sun. Before being rescued and handed into the project, this particular bird had been kept in a cage for 15 years and never learned how to fly. Vilarta says that reintroducing these two to the wild will be challenging, if at all possible, due to their inability to adjust to living outside of captivity.

“At least these two can be happy and safe here,” he says.

Currently, 10 of the 50 wild birds reintroduced remain in the main reintroduction site in Utinga State Park and visit the enclosure daily to socialize with the captive golden parakeets and to eat at the bird feeders that Vilarta leaves out for them. He spends every day here next to the enclosures, monitoring both the captive and wild populations.

The other 40 that were previously released have dispersed to other regions. Before their release, each golden parakeet is fitted with a ring on its legs and a collar around its neck to help keep track of the population. The radio collars help monitor the individual birds up to a point, but they’re not effective over long distances.

“Once they’ve been released, it’s hard to keep track of them,” Vilarta says. The plan now is to expand the size of the current aviaries to accommodate more golden parakeets, and then release another 50 into the wild over the next two years, which the researchers and conservationists say they hope will go on to create their own populations across Belém and beyond.

“I hope there will be more chicks soon because they now need to increase their population naturally,” Vilarta says. “At some point we can stop releasing new birds here and the population can reestablish itself naturally.”

Banner image: A flock of four golden parakeets flies through Belém’s Utinga State Park. Locally extinct in Belém for 100 years, the birds have returned to ths city following dedicated conservation efforts. Image courtesy of Marcelo Vilarta.

CORRECTION (8/5/2024): An earlier version of this article wrongly identified Monica Furtado da Costa as the director at Ideflor-Bio instead of biodiversity manager at the organization. The post has now been corrected.

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Citations:

Vilarta, M. R., Moraes, T. T., Gondim, M. F. N., Lobato, C., Costa, M. N. R. F., Oliveira, F. A., & Silveira, L. F. (2024). Feeding ecology of reintroduced golden parakeets (Guaruba guarouba, Psittacidae) in a protected area in the Amazon Forest. Diversity, 16(3). doi:10.3390/d16030188

Vilarta, M. R., Wittkoff, W., Lobato, C., Oliveria, R. A., Pereira, N. G. P., & Silveira, L. F. (2021). Reintroduction of the golden conure (Guaruba guarouba) in northern Brazil: Establishing a population in a protected area. Diversity, 13(5). doi:10.3390/d13050198

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