The first major conservation campaign I ever really got involved with was a year-long ‘worldtwitch’ I undertook in 1991. I was trying to raise funds for attempts to protect the Dominican Imperial Amazon/Parrot Amazona imperialis on behalf of what became BirdLife International. I was a little naive, there was no internet to let people know how I was getting on, and co-ordinating a project between a number of agencies when you’re (at heart) quite a reticent man made things a little tough, and I’m not sure to this day how much money was raised. However the ‘Speedbirding91 Project’ as it was known did ignite my interest in Caribbean parrots - species like the Puerto Rican Parrot, St Vincent Parrot, Red-necked Parrot, St Lucia Parrot, all of them Endangered or Vulnerable, and all threatened by combinations of large-scale habitat loss, trade in wild birds, hunting, and/or competition for nesting cavities - that continues to this day.

We were fortunate in January to be sent the most up to date information available on the Critically Endangered Puerto Rican Parrot by expert aviculturalist Ricardo Valentin, and now I’m delighted to have been given details by Dr Glyn Young of a survey of the St Lucia Parrot by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust that is taking place right now…

St Lucia Parrots at the Jersey Zoo.
Photos copyright James Morgan/Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

The St Lucia Parrot is one of the most striking members of the Amazona parrots and is entirely confined (endemic) to the tiny island of St Lucia which lies between St Vincent and Martinique in the Lesser Antilles. Once reasonably common habitat clearance severly impacted this beautiful bird and the population was estimated to be down to just about 1000 by the 1950s. Numbers over the next few decades dropped so fast that by the late 1970s there were only about 100 birds left, found in a 60 sqkm (23 sq mi) area in the mountainous central-southern region of the island’s interior.

The situation was obviously becoming critical, and the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust (then named the Jersey Zoo) took an early lead in conservation efforts, and from 1975 to 1996 supported parrot field research and monitoring. In 1977, Paul Butler, who was also alerted to the plight of the species through his own studies, began an imaginative and highly successful education programme with the philosophy of ‘Protection through Pride’ (the operation of this scheme, now co-ordinated by the Rare Center in the US, has spread and is helping to conserve many native species on St Lucia and other islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific). In 1979 the St Lucia Parrot was declared the island’s National bird and the Government introduced new protective laws to help save it from extinction.

The Durrell Trust began a captive breeding programme in 1976, and the following information is taken from a .pdf that Dr Young sent me:

In 1976 the captive breeding programme at Jersey Zoo was begun, under the instruction of the St Lucia Government, with 7 wild-caught fledglings and 2 adults that had been kept in captivity elsewhere. The first breeding success was in 1982, and initially the chicks were hand-reared. However, with time, careful research and the development of more successful husbandry methods, captive birds now rear their own offspring. The monitoring of nestboxes during the breeding season, using small infra-red cameras, has provided researchers and bird staff with vital inside information about what is usually very private behaviour.

In 1989 the Prime Minister of St Lucia took a pair of Jersey-bred amazons back to their homeland to take part in a second captive breeding programme. For St Lucian people, these parrots, housed in aviaries funded by the Trust, are an opportunity to meet their National bird face to face and may be the only ones that some will ever see. Wild birds are very shy and retiring and their natural habitat is largely inaccessible to people, but they can be seen on bus tours that take ecotourists to the forest.

Of the original 9 wild-caught birds, 4 are still at the Zoo. Although now in what are ordinarily thought to be their twilight years - they are aged between 25 and 31 - they are still going strong! The other 9 parrots that make up the current Jersey population are captive bred and themselves breeding successfully. A further 4 birds, captive-bred in Jersey, have been transferred to Chester Zoo and the headquarters of the World Parrot Trust in Hayle, Cornwall.

Clearly, the Durrell Trust has been at the forefront of the battle to protect this lustrous parrot for many years now, and by 2001 (when I think I’m right in saying the last surveys took place) the wild population was estimated to be up to around 500.

Having said that there has been continuing loss of habitat in the last decade, and that figure of 500 is an estimate only. There hasn’t been a scientifically robust estimate of population size performed to both confirm this success and, perhaps more importantly, provide a baseline against which to monitor the population if it becomes threatened once more. This is precisely what this new and complete survey aims to do.

What the survey team (or more properly ‘teams’ as up to ten different teams will be surveying the forests on St Lucia) discovers, then, will undoubtedly form the basis of what conservation measures need to be taken to ensure this beautiful bird is with us for many more years to come…

Much credit must go to the Durrell Trust for organising this survey, and I think it makes it particularly special that Dr Young himself has offered to keep 10,000 Birds readers updated on the latest results pretty much as soon as he’s had a chance to read them himself!

As a final thought, up until a few weeks ago the team in St Lucia were still undergoing the necessary training in GPS use [photo above] and first-aid, and generally getting to know each other and the new environment they find themselves in. From the photos I was sent it’s striking how young many of the researchers are (much like the Echo Parakeet Recovery Programme team in Mauritius that I wrote about a few days ago): evidently, contrary to what many newspapers will have you believe, not all young people are hanging around on street corners mugging old ladies. Some are travelling to remote forests, living in tents, getting soaking wet, beating off mosquitoes, and helping protect some of the world’s rarest birds…

Best of luck to them, and if you’d like more information on the conservation work of the Durrell Trust please go to http://www.durrell.org/Conservation/”>http://www.durrell.org/Conservation/

Medical training, St Lucia.
Photo copyright Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

The ‘Parrot Voles’, St Lucia.
Photo copyright Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust