A wild hope

Curaçá, Brazil—In 1995, conservationists and scientists embarked on a desperate attempt to save the world’s rarest bird, a blue-gray parrot called the Spix’s macaw. The bird had scarcely been spotted since scientists first described it in the early 19th century, and it had taken on an aura of mystery, making it irresistible to parrot lovers—and to poachers. “For well over a century we just had this very, very weak information that there was this kind of mythical, rather beautiful blue bird,” says Nigel Collar, a conservationist at BirdLife International. By the mid-1990s only a single individual remained alive in the wild, close to this dusty, small town in northeastern Brazil.

From DNA in molted feathers, researchers in the United Kingdom confirmed that the last wild bird was a male. At the time, fewer than three dozen birds were known to be held in collections and zoos around the world, and a decision was made to release a single female in hopes the birds would pair and produce offspring. The female was released close to where the male lived and seemed to quickly adapt to her new life, eating wild food and avoiding an attack by a falcon. She grew stronger by the day, flying farther and farther, and after little more than 2 months had paired with the male. Two weeks later, she mysteriously disappeared.

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