Feathers fly in UK parrot row
Date: 21-Sep-01
Country: BRAZIL
The Brazilian Environmental Institute known as Ibama said yesterday it is enlisting the support of eco-friendly activists as the U.K.'s Joint Nature Conservation Committee weighs what to do with the bright blue parrots, which are native to Brazil and are on the list of endangered species.
"We are finishing a document that we will send to the committee demanding the return of the macaws and are calling on independent groups to help put pressure on," Iolita Bampi, Ibama's general fauna coordinator, told Reuters yesterday.
"The information that we have is that this committee is evaluating the issue right now," Bampi said.
There are only 246 of the Lear's macaws left in the wild, up from 132 in 1999, according to Ibama.
British officials confiscated the three macaws, along with six other birds, when they arrested Harry Sissen trying to smuggle them in from eastern Europe. Last year, Sissen was fined and sentenced to two and a half years in jail.
"We waited and now we want our macaws back," Bampi said. "They are endemic to Brazil and this is the way it works under international laws. We have already received Lear's macaws back from France and Singapore."
The birds would not be reintroduced into the wild, but their offspring could be, she said.
The world's rarest bird, the Spix's macaw, disappeared from Brazil in 2000. The only specimen living in the wild was last seen in the northeastern state of Bahia.