Author: GrrlScientist / Source: Forbes
The USFWS is continuing its commitment to conserve the critically endangered Puerto Rican Amazon parrot by providing $11 million in funding to support captive-breeding efforts
Well, this is certainly unexpectedly good news. It turns out that the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) recently granted $11 million to the Puerto Rico Parrot Recovery Program at the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DNER), according to DNER secretary, Tania Vázquez Rivera.
These funds arrive almost one year after two catastrophic hurricanes, Irma and Maria, devastated Puerto Rico just two weeks apart in September 2017. In addition to severely damaging the captive breeding facilities, these hurricanes stripped the forests that the wild parrots live in, toppled the trees that they nest in, and killed nearly half of this critically endangered parrot’s wild population.
Fortunately, all of the 174 captive parrots at the José L. Vivaldi Memorial Aviary at Río Abajo Forest Reserve, Utuado, and most of the 230 captive parrots at the Iguaca Aviary at El Yunque National Forest, survived the storms, although El Yunque’s wild flock — which numbered 50 to 55 parrots before the hurricane — vanished. But another flock at Río Abajo mostly survived.
“After talks and meetings at the headquarters of the federal agency in Atlanta, we have achieved this allocation that is vital for the recovery of this species,” Ms. Vázquez Rivera…
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