September 2023: Why Baby Parrots Look Like Little Dinosaurs

Junior Rangers hold signs about protecting amazon parrots during a parade.

Two gray-fuzzed baby yellow-naped amazon parrots face each other and squawk.

Two older baby yellow-naped amazon parrots face the camera inquisitively. Their growth is visible through their increased green plumage.

You helped 17 baby parrots live free!

CONSERVATION IN ACTION

Parrots are smart, cute and talkative! Most people love them, but we often do not think about what's lost when these birds are no longer in their native habitat. Amazon parrots (Amazon refers to the genus) are large birds that can carry tree seeds to new areas, helping to regenerate forests. Without their joyful squawks, forests grow quiet, and tree diversity decreases over time.

Scientists have written that there are fewer than 2,500 mature yellow-naped amazon parrots throughout their range in Mexico and Central America. That's not many birds to help regrow the region’s forests. But thanks to your support, we are working to change that.

Ranger Marcos Calero presents an incentive payment to a local community member for a protecting a yellow-naped amazon parrot nest. Photo from Marcos Calero.

A yellow-naped amazon parrot pokes its head out of an artificial nest created by Paso Pacifíco to help parrots survive in heavily deforested areas. Photo by Marcos Calero.

This 2023 nesting season, our parrot-protecting work did not benefit from an institutional funder. Donors like you were and are it, and boy, did your support make a difference!

Donors like you recently helped us to protect yellow-naped Amazons in two provinces of Nicaragua, and build connections for parrot conservation efforts in El Salvador.
Your belief in our holistic approach helped us to build pride among 188 young Junior Rangers who aspire to see large flocks of parrots in the wild one day.
Your gifts also helped to directly fund conservation incentives, money rewards that are paid to farmers who dedicate themselves to protecting nests on their properties.
And you helped our technicians climb dozens of trees and our biologists to check up on more than 20 birds.

Despite the heartbreaks we felt when poachers stole seven nests, your investments made a difference for the 17 baby parrots that made it into the wild safely. Thank you!!!

Why do baby parrots look like little dinosaurs?

Because they are! Birds are direct descendants of feathered dinosaurs. And baby parrots have features that make them look particularly dinosaur-like. Their heads are large compared to their bodies, and they have big eyes and sharp beaks. They share many other features with their ancient ancestors, including feathers, hollow bones, and even their DNA.

Four yellow-naped amazon parrot eggs sit in a nest.

Three ugly-cute baby parrots sit on a cloth. Two are limp on the ground, while one sits up. Their eyes are not yet fully open.

Three baby parrots sit on a cloth. Bits of blue and green feathers are visible, and their eyes are fully open..

Three alert parrots with strong patches of green and blue feathers stand upright and alert on a black cloth during a health checkup with a Paso Pacífico ranger.

Thank you for saving 17 critically endangered parrots!

Make a Gift!

Eliza Woolley in front of a waterfall. Photo by Eliza Woolley.

TEAM MEMBER SPOTLIGHT

Eliza Woolley is a key member of our administrative team in Ventura, California office. As data manager for conservation, she helps us to stay in contact with donors (like you) and partner organizations, and also tracks data about our program activities through annual reports. As a natural-born editor, she supports our executive director in grant writing and donor communications. For that, we are extremely grateful.

You would appreciate that Eliza is highly organized with superb attention to detail. Important information such as your donation record could be lost without Eliza's careful work, especially given the team's tendency to focus our attention to on-the-ground work in Central America.

Eliza grew up in southern California and joined our team in late 2016 after graduating from Brigham Young University in English with minors in editing and digital humanities. Our recent print newsletter, available here, is possible thanks to Eliza's skills as a writer, graphic designer, and digital editor.

When not working, Eliza enjoys reading, baking, listening to and playing music, scoring secondhand freebies for herself and our office, and connecting with faraway friends. We are so grateful to Eliza for her role in strengthening Paso Pacífico.

Rangers Karen Lacayo and Yajaira Vargas work with Junior Rangers to help them use binoculars to spot birds during a citizen science bird-counting event. Photo by Bismarck Picado.

IN GRATITUDE

This month, we'd like to give special thanks to the 22 people who donated and garnered a match for us on GlobalGiving last week. You raised $2,124! Almost $500 of this was matching funds. That's enough for a ranger's monthly salary! Thank you!

Fifteen of those donors gave to our migratory bird campaign. Thanks to you, we'll be able to start our overwintering bird monitoring in October, starting with the delightful Global Big Day celebration with the Junior Rangers. Thanks for joining this campaign to help migratory birds.

Every gift, big and small, makes a difference, and that's why we're grateful to donors like you. If you would like to donate for migratory birds, follow this link. If you start a monthly gift there, it will still get a match!

Make a Matched Gift

Western tanager caught during MoSI monitoring, photo by Marlon Sotelo.

MARN team members with crates of confiscated amazon parrots. Photo courtesy MARN.

Photo by MARN

IN THE NEWS

In recent years, parrot trafficking has increased. We have never seen numbers so high. This rise is fueled by global consumer demand, with little regard for the welfare of the birds, and many birds die during the traffickers' journeys. Here are three stories that we are aware of:

This spring, a suitcase of over two dozen eggs and birds was seized at customs in Miami, Florida. Agents were alerted by tiny peeps from wet, starving chicks in the midst of hatching. Bound for Taiwan, all the birds would probably have died if not for U.S. customs. Most of the birds were yellow-naped amazons.
A parrot conservationist we know found a news report in China where over 80 yellow-naped amazons were confiscated this spring, in the middle of nesting season.
Only last month, 33 yellow-naped amazons and 13 other birds were confiscated at the Salvadoran border with Nicaragua (seen above). It is just a small part of the illegal parrot trade in Central America.

With fewer than 2500 yellow-naped amazons left in the wild, the poaching numbers mentioned above are devastating. But there is hope. Donors like you have helped to save over 170 parrots with us in the past eight years, making a significant contribution to the future. Thank you. You made a difference!

Yellow-naped amazon parrot perches on a branch and looks down curiously.

PARTNERS MAKE IT POSSIBLE

Your donations are sometimes augmented by partner organizations. This month, we received the fantastic news that we were awarded a two-year grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - International Affairs Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Program. The funding will support our new yellow-naped parrot project in El Salvador, entitled “Protecting Yellow-naped Amazon Parrots in El Salvador through Conservation Incentives and Community Involvement.”

Over the coming months, we will begin to train community rangers in parrot monitoring methods and scout out parrot nesting areas near wetlands in eastern El Salvador. Similar to our program in Nicaragua, community members will be able to receive incentive payments if they commit to protecting nests. Our partners at FUNZEL and Mujeres y Naturaleza (MUNAT) will support this initiative through a national awareness campaign and parrot population monitoring, respectively.

Thanks to these partnerships, Paso Pacífico will soon contribute to the goals of El Salvador's Ministry of Environment (MARN) and its country-level program for the yellow-naped Amazon. This program is based on the country's five-year strategic plan for recovering this endangered bird.

And guess what? This strategy was written thanks to Paso Pacífico, meaning donors like you. Thank you for supporting our far-reaching work for birds.

Thank you for your support!

INSTAGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

Thank you to all the photographers who contributed photos used in this e-newsletter. These include but are not limited to MARN, Bismarck Picado and Paso Pacífico staff Marcos Calero, Marlon Sotelo, and Eliza Woolley.