Hollow eye sockets glared at me from the dark tropical leaf litter. Not expecting to be watched from below, I rested on my haunches, searching with the image recognition software installed by my primate ancestors. Once sure there were no coils of a deadly fer-de-lance snake, I plunged my hand into the leaves. Out came […]
Tag: scarlet macaw
Weak controls fuel surge in wildlife trafficking by air across Latin America
Brazilian authorities point to Russian biologist Kyrill Kravchenko as an international wildlife trafficker. They had been monitoring him since 2017, after he was arrested in the Netherlands with rare wildlife from Brazil in his possession. In mid-January this year, as he tried to board a plane to Russia at São Paulo’s international airport, they intercepted […]
Why is the Red List so important?
Red: a colour of alarm, urgency, passion and energy. For most conservationists, “The Red List” evokes all four of these feelings, perhaps all at once. The Red List tells us which species are most in danger and which to conserve first. It is also a powerful tool for persuading governments to protect threatened species, and […]
Trinidad and Tobago: a biodiversity hotspot overlooked
The two-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean (just off the coast of Venezuela) may be smaller than Delaware, but it has had an outsized role in the history of rainforest conservation as well as our understanding of tropical ecology. Home to an astounding number of tropical ecosystems and over 3,000 species and […]
Flying rainbows: the scarlet macaw returns to Mexico
On April 21, 2013, the first flock of scarlet macaws (of many more to come) was released into the jungles of Aluxes Ecopark, nearby classified World Heritage Site Palenque National Park, as a part of a massive reintroduction project to restore the popular and culturally-significant bird to the well preserved rainforests of Palenque and the […]