LoraKim Joyner's Blog, page 4

The Ups and Downs of Parrot Nesting Season in Guatemala

Four climbers from WCS - thanks for coming!Abundance is they name fortune!Not only did the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCs) lend us one experienced field technician, parrot conservationist, and tree climber like last year, but 4 for our 2019 season! They came from Northern Guatemala to help us understand the nesting success of the endangered yellow-naped parrot in our 6 conservation sites in Southern Guatemala. Our first conservation area - Tarrales EcoreserveWe skipped our first monitoring location because the only active nest of yellow-naped amazons is in a dead tree that would be really dangerous to climb. The good news that it’s harder for poachers to climb as well, and this nest might actually fledge chicks. Inspecting the nest that the iguana took overSo we passed on by this ranch, and ended up at our second location, where our climbers, after an all night bus ride from Northern Guatemala, immediately started going up trees. Getting the ropes ready to climb our most likely active nest, we found a dead chick, only a few hours dead. It appeared to have died from a wound, likely from an iguana’s bite or nails, and indeed, an iguana was found in the now empty parrot nest. Our guess is that the iguana wanted the cavity and pushed the chick out. Dead chick at base of tree Sunrise at our next locationAt our next location we found two nests that had been poached that we had been watching. After this disappointment the climb team started climbing trees that had reported some activity. This is a long shot to just go about willy-nilly climbing trees, but on one tree we struck gold – deep in one cavity 3 nestlings ready to fledge! (We confirmed that they did the following week).Our next tree had a pair of bat falcons perched in the upper branches. Our experienced climber knew what that meant and armed himself with a long branch to swish at the bat falcons each time they swooped upon him, which they did enthusiastically and often. Bat falcon resting between swooping at climber The only active nest at this site was a white-fronted parrot nest (female leaving) in a rubber tree, a primary crop of this farmThe following conservation site for yellow-naped amazons didn’t have any active nests, though our climbers went up and down tens of times checking cavities and also putting up nest boxes that the parrots might use next year for nests. Placing artificial nest boxes Our next site, Patrocinio!Going on to our next location, we once again found a raptor in a suspected parrot nest – this time 2 barn owl chicks who clicked and hissed at our climber. Two other trees were suspicious but because they had Africanized bees we could not climb them (one of these nests was latter confirmed to be active through observation of parents feeding a chick). Two barn owls in what had been a parrot nest in previous years Parrot nest box at this location being used for a nest, and a perch after catching a bird for food Green parakeets protecting a nest box that had been a white-fronted parrot nest the year beforeAt our last site we were once again stymied by Africanized bees, but though we couldn’t climb it, we later confirmed it active through observation. Our other two nests yielded nothing, though they white-fronted parrots had been very active defending the nest box, which held one old egg. White-fronted parrot guarding her nest, which she later abandoned ( there were many parrots raising a ruckus near this nest box - perhaps the competition was too great)So let’s do the math:6 field locations of monitoring and protecting nests with 7 active nests1 nest predated2 nests poached1 nest fledged with three chicks3 more nests likely to fledge (trees too dangerous to climb)At first glance this seems hopeful as 14 adult parrots were likely to produce 8 or more chicks. Maybe, just maybe, there are enough sneaky parrots where poachers cannot confirm the nest and enough trees that are too dangerous to climb. (Though poachers will take far more risks than biologists) Further analysis shows the reality of this data:These 6 locations are located where there are the most yellow-naped parrots in all of Guatemala, which is along the pacific coast of the country leading up into volcanic slopes. We have counted about 200 adults in these 6 sites. Which means that Guatemala’s very reduced and endangered population of yellow-naped amazons is producing very few chicks. The partial good is that we may not have found all the nests - there may be more success than we have been able to document so far. Regardless, the situation is dire: We don’t know for sure, but current estimates put the whole population at 400-500 (max!) parrots left.Some species of parrot are doing better, such as these green parakeets nesting in a tree in the center of Retalhuleu, Guatemala near our Burger King coffee stop at 6 a.mAt our recent workshop on yellow-naped conservation others remarked that this low number means that functionally this species is extinct in this country. Our workshop participants, flying freeGoing from thousands of active nests 3 decades ago to only a handful is unfortunate, for the parrots yes, but also for the humans who desire parrots to fly free over their native lands.Scarcity is thy name misfortune! They may be scare, but they are fierce and beautiful!

Poachers and Protectors

We are glad to announce the online availability of the film, "Poachers and Protectors," commissioned and produced by the US Fish and Wildlife service. It tells the story of our project in La Moskitia, Honduras and the courageous people there who are trying to preserve their cherished scarlet macaw. This bird is highly endangered in the region and people from the local villages are making a difference.The people can make a difference because they are supported with stipends to patrol the area. They are sustenance farmers, hunters, and fisherpeople and exist largely outside of a cash economy. The funds that we can divert to them from our gracious donors, such as the USFWS, help them take care of themselves (for example, by buying school materials and medicines for their family), so that they can then take care of the parrots.The film demonstrates how and why community conservation can work, and must work. If the local people are not engaged and committed, then the long-term survival of conservation efforts becomes more precarious. Over time, the poachers can become protectors as they choose to meet their basic needs with different choices. Conservation efforts from those in solidarity with these villagers combined with donations (from people such as One Earth Conservation's donors) can assist with community development. This allows local people to become educators, rescuers, and protectors while the slow change of cultural expectations can take root among succeeding generations in the project area.In the meantime, lives are saved.Film in SpanishFilm with Audio Description

Parrot Conservation is a Team Sport

it was good to meet with about 45 others for the Conservation Mini Conference: Flying Free on Saturday, March 16, 2019 at Foster Parrots in Rhode Island. I spoke as did Dr. Lucy Spielman of Creature Conserve, Emerson Urtrecho ofLOCOs and One Earth Conservation in Nicaragua, and Danika Oriol-Morway of Foster Parrots on the subject of Guyana parrot conservation. Rev. Dr. LoraKim Joyner introducing Emerson Urtrecho Danika Oriol-Morway asking us what are our next steps (towards liberation)Throughout the presentations and in the comments we heard a persistent theme: How can we work together to save our birds, our planet, and ourselves when the market demand is bleeding parrots out of the wild into cages. I suggested in my presentation that parrot conservation is a team sport - and that we need each and everyone to love as fiercely and courageously as possible. Dr. Spielman , a wildlife veterinarian said, "There is no medicine for extinction." I concur. The solutions are not easily addressed, for the cure is within us, and it's going to take a lot us, for as Ms. Oriol-Morway said, "Everything is broken, and everything needs to be fixed." Emerson explaining how the parrot says "Your home is not my home" and that we need to "Let the parrot fly free"During her presentation she also said, "We have turned our back on the sun parakeet in Guyana, on what we are consuming." So captivated are our hearts with birds in our homes and collections, we forget the price these birds pay to get to this place. As one refuge manager in Guyana told me, "You raise the prices and demand of birds internationally so that it is hard for us not to sell what is ours so it can become yours." This demand wrecks havoc: human hunger for feathered companionship decimates wild flocks, so many already on the brink of extinction, and only 10% of parrots from the wild are alive at the end of a year in the illegal bird trade (and it's still legal in two countries in South America - Guyana and Suriname). As I write this my heart aches for the 12 nest trees in our project area in Honduras already robbed of eggs, purchased by people from China who illegally enter Honduras from Nicaragua, bargaining for eggs that they can then sell to a world who knows not the harm they are doing (or do know, but have turned their backs). I am also sad for all the humans caught in the chains of the illegal trade - the trappers, the buyers, and the owners, for we part of the problem (and solution) of what imprisons us and what can set us free. None are free until all are free is the motto of what we ask to be the emphasis of parrot conservation. We must all fly free, including our organizations. Sun parakeets in Guyana 2019 (photo by Agnes Coenen)I recently publicly celebrate theUS Fish and Wildlife service listing the Central American scarlet macaw as endangered. A conversation ensured with readers, and one person asked me, "What does scarlet macaw trade in the USA have to do with selling macaw eggs to China?" I wrote:Hello dear [reader]: The truth is that the scarlet macaw is highly endangered. The solutions are very complex and the pressure is very intense. It isn't just the Chinese, it's all of us that are connected to the long line of extracting wildlife that raises the demand, price, and trade. I include myself as one of the many who share responsibility for loss of life and populations of wild parrots. As we say in many of the countries in which I work, "We all are poachers." Captive breeding has not lessened the extraction of wildlife in Central America. It may even be that it subtly increases the demand as the captive bird is seen as a desirable and lucrative pet around the world. The suffering is intense - in people and parrots of the Americas. I wish you deep meaning in your love for parrots, and to all of us that have relationships to them, and I also know that we must face the harm that captivity and trade is doing to the birds. Macaw chicks might not even make it this far with the illegal traffic in parrot eggsBecause the pressure is so intense and woven into our extraction and domination centered societies and economies, I feel that a trading parrots anywhere is a threat to parrots everywhere. I don't have the data to prove this link, I just have the hard evidence of parrots dying, suffering, and disappearing. The need for action is urgent and because we are so close to losing so much, I feel that we need to apply a precautionary principlewhich says because the risk of harm is possible or evident, we must curtail our behavior even while we can't prove consistent links between behavior and outcome. In the case of the parrot trade, it has not saved wild populations and does in many cases harm it, and certainly hams individual birds and the people and communities that are losing their birds. So as a precaution, let's ease up on the trade, or better yet, stop it. Please.Do not stop loving the birds in your hearts and homes, but let this be the last one you have, before we are down to the last ones in the wild. Let's not let any more species turn into ghosts in the hearts of the people who have lived with them for thousands of years.

A River Separates Hope - Macaw Conservation in Honduras and Nicaragua

There is a town in Nicaragua known as Esperanza, which means “Hope” in Spanish. Right now it doesn’t feel as if there is much hope there, as we are learning that the macaws from our parrot conservation project in Honduras are ending up there, illegally captured, shot, or even eaten. Our birds are vulnerable, because Esperanza is only a short distance from our project across the Coco River that divides the Honduras Moskito region from that in Nicaragua. Rio Coco with our Honduras territory in the upper half, and Nicaragua in the lower halfThe latest incident just happened in February 2019. We had liberated a group of scarlet macaws from the Rescue and Liberation Center in Mabita, Honduras, in December and then in early February we heard stories about two of our macaws ending up in Esperanza. One had been apparently shot and eaten, and another had been surrounded by young boys trying to hurt the bird with rocks and slingshots. An adult intervened and then another man took the bird to his home. When our field director went to retrieve the macaw, the man refused to hand the bird over unless he was paid. Essentially he was holding the bird for ransom. Bird returned home after ransom paidI arrived at the end of February and immediately our team decided to send over one of our parrot rangers to get the bird. Traveling by motorcycle and small ferry, he haggled with the man until, for L1000 (about $50), the man released the macaw. The bird then had a long trip back across the river and on motorcycle in the dark along dirt roads until she returned to Mabita. Rescued bird with clipped wings, meaning that the bird cannot fly free for a long timeI examined the bird the next day and, tragedy of tragedies, the bird’s wing feathers had been clipped and trauma left the macaw blind in her left eye. She was frighteningly thin, and also cold and weak. Back in her old cage, she called to her old friends, who joined her in mutual preening during the day. She was back home, where she will now have to stay until her wing feathers can grow out and we can release her again. Cloudy eye showing injury that leads to blindnessWe don’t know how many birds we lose like this to neighboring villages. That is why it is important to expand the project ever wider, including more and more people and communities, so we can protect the birds and people at the center of our efforts. We are now up to 11 participating communities stretching from the Mountains of Colon to nearly Pt. Lempira and the Atlantic ocean, and also to Nicaragua. This project has become the biggest community patrolled parrot conservation effort in the world. Old friends at our project site come to greet the returned birdAnd yet there are immeasurable losses every day.But we must also remember that the successes and the easing of suffering goes on all around us, even if we cannot see all of it directly.And for now, that has to be enough. One day our rescued bird will be free, and remain free

What Would Berta Cáceres Say?

LoraKim is still in La Moskitia, Honduras until March 7, 2019. Here is a blog she composed three years ago today when Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres was brutally murdered for her important work in her country.Sunrise over Rio Tegucigalpita near CuyamelCuyamel, Honduras February 3, 2016: Often people imagine the life of a field conservationist as being exciting. It can be, but it’s also a march through discomfort and unexpected challenges.Take for instance my first day in the field this week when visiting Cuyamel and our yellow-headed parrot project with Cuerpo de Conservación Omoa. Getting up at 4 a.m. is so like sleeping in, compared to some projects, and driving out to the observation site in the dark without our no-show guide is also not unusual, nor the drizzle that keeps gear tucked away. Where things begin to get more complicated is being left to observe while the driver of the car goes to get the guide, only to get a flat on a muddy track.Our guide turns out to be a conservationist who risks his comfort to look for nests and to protect themNext thing I know I am riding on the back of a motorcycle along same muddy track to join up and observe a different yellow-headed parrot nesting area. This muddy track soon turned to a quagmire. It was slow going, and admittedly, I needed a little help. Just to brag though, I only sunk into the mud to my knees while others went up to their thighs.Slogging through the mud – (I get by with a little help from my friends)While perched on one of the few dry spots, I could hear a pair of yellow-headed parrots calling in the distance as they made their rounds defending their territory. I couldn’t get closer because of the muck, but it turns out I didn’t need to, because one of the pair came to me to chase away a pair of calling white-fronted amazons in a tree nearby. Busily observing these behaviors, I lost track of the fact that my camera had been on a fence post and had attracted a large ant that laid into me when I picked up the camera. It was like a hornet sting and still hurt 12 hours later, when I was back along the same muddy track in the pouring rain, huddled under a tarp while trying to work my phone to see if the other biologists were thinking the same thing as me, “time to go!”Huddled under my rain poncho in the mud and cow pattiesIt was not time to go for Berta Cáceres, a human rights and environmental activist who was murdered this morning in Honduras. Any slight discomfort we can experience seems to pale in comparison to a woman who risked her life, and then lost it, for a better Honduras for her people. Her loss sparks anger among me and my companions, and throughout the world, for Honduras is one of the most dangerous places for environmental activists.Berta Cáceres showing us the wayAs evening closes, I peel out of my wet socks for the first time in 13 hours and rub the ant bite that still throbs, thinking of Berta. What would she say of our work here protecting parrots?She might say, “Rise up my people so that parrots can catch the wind of our indignation and forever fly free!”With that vision of a better world in my mind, I realize that truly every day in the field as a conservationist is exciting, meaningful, and worth all the hassle.

Ring of Fire

Savanna burning to the left and to the right. Are we fools to be riding down the middle of the hungry flames?The intrepid LoraKim Joyner is now in Honduras (after returning from Guatemala earlier this month!), so here's a blog she wrote on May 15, 2016 of an earlier trip she took there."Love is a burning thingAnd it makes a fiery ringBound by wild desireI fell into a ring of fire.I fell into a burning ring of fireI went down, down, down and the flames went higher.And it burns, burns, burnsThe ring of fire, the ring of fireThe taste of love is sweet…"Johnny Cash “Ring of Fire”The love of parrots and the people who protect them propelled me to go down for two months to the Moskitia region of Honduras. This time period corresponds to the peak of the breeding season of the endangered scarlet macaw, which extends from January to August. The Miskito indigenous people in the core conservation village of Mabita, and now expanding to the villages of Rus Rus and Pranza, have decided to make a stand to save their wildlife, and in turn, I stand with them.Surrounded by a ring of fire. All around us we see evidence of the destructive nature of nature. This includes human nature, for it is widely assumed that most of these fires start from ignorance or purposeful destruction of the pine savanna. Every day there is at least one new fire somewhere, burning some parrot nest tree, filling the air with smoke that stings the eyes in the morning, or causes us to put the pedal to the metal to outrun a fire that has jumped over the dirt road leading us home. The fires chase us also in the dark, lighting up the nighttime return from the field, like the USA White House Christmas tree.When we reach a high spot ,we can see how all seems burned and blackened around our village, or is burning currently with columns of smoke everywhere. Some nights the flames in the distance cause a glow that seems to reach the moon. The destruction seems so complete, so difficult to contain, yet we carry on with blind faith that something can be saved. For instance, the local fire brigade last week made a dashing run to one nest tree to create a fire break, burning their rubber boots as they did so, and saving two macaw chicks. Burned boots from saving a scarlet macaw nestThere is fire in the people’s efforts here. Every day the parrot patrols go out to turn back those whose desire to make money from the illegal wild bird trades dumps us into the age-old conundrum of us against them. Sometimes there are clashes, threats, angry words.Parrot patrol about to head out for a full day of scouting all the nests and watching the entry ways into the conservation area. Their hands are raised as they say, “Apu pauni pree palisa.” (Scarlet macaw fly free)Other times there is just the felled parrot nest tree, chicks long gone with poachers oblivious to their broken bones, injuries, or malnutrition. The remaining eggs and feathers haunt us as a silent reproach to all that we as humans have failed to contain.Poachers downed this pine tree with a machete, and once down, hacked open the nest cavity to extract the chicks. (climb team is in the distance checking on a macaw nest tree that had two dead chicks who died of unknown causes)Hate smolders, as do the stumps that extend as far as the eye can see. Hawks soar through the fire’s burned remains looking for stricken prey. Life finds a way. The hawks benefit from the fire as long as their nests aren’t in the path, and gentle green shoots cover some sectors like a blanket of emerging possibility.A hawk keeps watch over fire looking for prey weakened or scared by the fireLife finds a way, and remains, as do we, and as do 19 active scarlet macaw nests with 29 chicks and 5 eggs (our first chick fledged 5 days ago). The breeding season has never gotten this far along with so many macaw families still intact. As a tribute to what the macaws have accomplished, and us too, when we leave each nest tree after the pre-fledging chick exams, we raise our hands to them saying, “Apu pauni pree palisa” (Scarlet macaw fly free in Miskito). With every chick flying free with their parents, our spirits soar.Painting on our research station with the words in Miskito which mean, “Macaw fly free!”We may be in a burning ring of fire with the pines coming down, down, down, but the fire of commitment and love rises up, up, up upon rainbow wings of what can, and will be. The taste of love is sweet, and it may yet quench human desire.

How To Keep Parrots Flying Free

(To register, clickhere) There is not a day that goes by that I don't ask myself this question - how can I and others keep our parrots flying free. The pressure is intense (link to birds that are gone) from the international wildlife trade, leading me to rethink how we might do conservation, as well as seeking bigger and more powerful allies. Counting parrots with the wildlife club of Fair View village in Guyana, where we went to see how we might support their efforts in conservation. In the past, One Earth Conservation has worked mostly on the supply side of the market -helping human communities and individuals find other avenues for their well being other than by trapping birds. Currently I believe that we also need to work on the demand side, which we are doing in our None Are Free Until All Are Free project. For the sake of the birds, and for the people and communities where parrots are still flying free, we need as an international community to condemn the practice of selling birds and keeping them in cages. Currently, breeding birds to supply pets does not positively impact the extraction and extinction of parrots from their native lands. If anything, it is making it worse, as it fuels the desire for birds in the home and in collections, and as such, increases their monetary value. Counting parrots at Iwokrama in Guyana In every country where I work, I hear one story after another about how international buyers come to an area to buy adult birds, chicks and/or eggs. Recently, in Iwokrama Forest in Guyana, one ranger told me, after seeing our presentation on parrot conservation, "The prices the international buyers offer make it tempting to take what is ours so it will be theirs." Yellow-crowned parrots flying free in Surama village in Guyana It is time to stop taking what is not ours to take - the life and freedom of the parrots and the health of biotic communities that depend on the parrots. How do we do this? It's a complicated situation for sure, and perhaps you feel powerless to fight back against a global market economy of extraction. So let's start feeling powerful by coming together to see what we can do now. Counting along the Letham Road near Iwokrama . We have to take the long road for parrot conservation, but we journey together Towards this goal, we are promoting and attending a mini parrot conservation conference, "Keep Our Parrots Flying Free," at the Foster Parrots' parrot sanctuary in Rhode Island on Saturday, March 16th, 2019. I will be one of the speakers, as well as Emerson Urtecho from the LOCOs and Fauna and Flora International, our partners on Ometepe Island in Nicaragua. Dr. Lucy Spielman and Danika Oriol-Morway will also be presenting. To find out more and to register, click here. Space is limited so get your tickets now! Let's keep our parrots flying free by conferencing, and hence, soaring together. Rainbow during parrot count in Fair View village

Parrots and People Carry Messages

Sunset at Ecoreserve Los Tarrales, GautemalaLoraKim is in Guatemala now with limited internet access, so below is a blog she wrote on January 24, 2017 during an earlier trip she took to that country.We are journeying up and down the Pacific coast of Guatemala within the range of the endangered yellow-naped amazon. Each morning we rise early to catch the bird activity and then do the same thing in the evening.We are surveying the population, and also training and inspiring as we go, though motivation can sometimes be lacking during the long, hot days, especially when we have counts with zero individuals seen of this species. Even when we count higher numbers of birds, it is far lower than it was 25 years ago. And it may go lower yet.So what message do we deliver to the people of this area? Do we warn them of peril, or instill confidence that we can turn the situation around? What message do we in fact receive ourselves for the meaning of our work? We are working against immense odds, and still we plod along. Will we be successful, even a little in some small place here?Last night I read in “News of the World” by Paulette Jiles, “Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally, but it must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed.”Manuel, LoraKim, and Paulino on observation tower en Ecoreserve El Patrocinio, GuatemalaI find peace in these words, for it means we live in mystery and all of us carry a jewel, even if we don’t know what it is, can explain it, or can see it with our limited human perception. It is good and right to find peace here on the Pacific slope of Guatemala where we have been working. This region is called a “slope” because you drop down in altitude (our highest elevation was some 800 meters) as you leave the volcano slopes and to go to the ocean (we will be on the beach this week in El Salvador). Perhaps like the land here, we will tumble into peace even when it is not possible to know what meaning comes from what we do here – either for ourselves or for others. It’s just our job to carry the one message that is our life, and not drop it, or drop out. I’m not saying it’s easy to work under these conditions, mostly because of the circumstances of the people and parrots here, but it appears that these are the conditions that life set up for us. Knowing we carry treasure, no matter what we do or think, helps to counteract the status of threatened birds, poverty, violence and climatic and environmental harm evidenced everywhere.Hummingbird in Guatemala

Conservation: Take a Life, Give a Life

What an encounter between a parrot and snake can teach us Painted parakeet caught by what seems to be a vine snake, also known as a parrot snake I was packing up to leave our camp on the river between Brazil and Guyana when the leader of the parrot conservation project in the village of Karasabai came running up from the river side. "A snake has a parakeet." Our camping was a means to teach parrot conservation in the field to a group of young, and future parrot conservationists. I and the 20 students in our parrot conservation training course rushed down the slope to hear the intermittent plaintive cries of painted parakeet in the jaws of a small green snake. Later we identified it as a parrot snake, or vine snake, mildly venomous to small prey. I assumed the bird would die no matter what we did, so concentrated on getting pictures of the ordeal so I could identify the snake and document the predation. Some of the students had another idea, especially after the parakeet hadn't died after 30 minutes. Before we could have a conversation, they started throwing sticks at the snake until the serpent finally let go of the parakeet. The parakeet fluttered to a nearby tree, clinging desperately to the branches, and to live. It fell to the ground, and we put the bird in the box thinking that perhaps we could treat the bird back at the village where I could get medical supplies. Instead the birds condition deteriorated until finally, though barely breathing and with a faint heartbeat, we elected to euthanize the bird so it would not suffer. Back at the village we gathered the students around to talk about the ordeal. Little did I know how traumatic it was to many students to not be able to save the bird. I felt awful too that the bird had suffered so much. I assumed the bird would have died no matter what we did and that the snake probably needed a meal, so I had not been thinking of saving the little parrot, but several of them had. One of the students rose to his feet and said: "Death is a part of the cycle of life. But if you take a life, you must give a life back. We took our endangered sun parakeets for years, we took their lives. They died in the wildlife trade and they have almost gone extinct here. Now we must give those lives back. We must protect our parrots with everything we can commit to. We must give our lives for our parrots." I was moved by their commitment and his words, as it is a big part of my motivation in parrot conservation; to give back the life that has been given to me and to amend for all the lives I have taken as a human being, as a pet parrot owner, as an aviculturist, as an avian veterinarian, and ever still as an avian conservationist. Perhaps that is what conservation is - to give back the lives we have taken. And success in the final accounting is not whether the species is saved, but if we are saved by how many more lives we have benefited, and how fewer lives we have harmed. Though it was a hard lesson learned, as was the entire long week of intensive parrot conservation training, and indeed the entirety of parrot conservation, this group of future rangers showed that they are made of the stuff of great conservationists. Graduating class of parrot conservationists with leaders Andrew, LoraKim, and Danika

eBird and gBird (Gone-birds)

I loveeBird!. I continually encourage all the people with whom I work to enter their parrot sightings and counts on this online platform. In the past, I have also spent hours entering data myself. I believe strongly in citizen science and have seen the positive benefits for our understanding of birds, networking, teamwork, and information needed for conservation. Recent events, however, have caused me to change my mind about the use of eBird in regards to parrots. On my last trip to Guyana, South America, in January 2019 I heard a story of how a man from Europe offered to pay a village exorbitant amounts of money if they would trap all their sun parakeets and give them to him (reportedly for conservation efforts). I have been told of buyers from Asia and neighboring Nicaragua moving up and down the Coco River between Honduras and Nicaragua offering to buy macaw eggs and young chicks. One buyer even entered the village where we center our conservation activities. Two-and-a-half years ago, a man from China was arrested with a suitcase of parrots smuggled out of our conservation area in Paraguay. In the past few months I have been contacted by people connected in the past to the smuggling of parrots and the extensive purchase of parrots from all over the world to build large collections. They have wanted to know more about One Earth Conservation's work and findings. And every week there is some story or another of parrots being trapped and smuggled in areas where it is forbidden to do so. The link in this sentence leads to a story about a recent capture of parrots hidden in a car and wrapped in plastic. There are also suspicions surrounding several cases of parrots being removed from their countries of origin and moved to another country with "permission" from authorities. Ranger trainees in Guyana learning to survey parrot populations. I won't be entering their data on eBird. These recent events, as well as 32 years of experience with working in parrot conservation in the Americas, have led me to understand that the international (and domestic) pressure for parrots, especially the rare ones, the macaws, and the ones that talk, is extensive and relentless. I believe that the international trade is also sophisticated and is watching the internet for signals of where birds may be. I have struggled with what to do with the information we gather in our parrot census work. Do I share for the benefit of the birds, which could also harm them? I am especially alarmed because parrots are the most endangered group of birds, with some estimates showing that 50% of all species are endangered or threatened. Torn, I have nevertheless made a decision to no longer enter parrot data on eBird, at least temporarily. Given the fact that parrots are nearly gone in many areas and that the international trade seems to be ramping up, it is not worth the risk to give out any more information. The local trappers and poachers we know, and we are working with them in as much of a relational and collaborative manner as possible. It's the unknown-to-me middle people, buyers, business people and collectors that I don't trust. With corruption and the hardness of life so prominent in most places where parrots still fly free, I am hesitant to trust anyone in power who can tweak the laws or use bribes to get the birds they want, because I have seen countless cases over the many decades of working in parrot conservation of such corruption.Another count in Guyana where I won't be entering data (Iwokrama). At One Earth we had thought about opening up an international citizen science project on iNaturalist regarding parrots, but I am doubting that strategy as well. I know that eBird can hide some data, but have been told that it is not foolproof. Perhaps if we had a stronger international movement to discourage the trade I would feel more comfortable with sharing the data. Until that happens, I feel that the parrots and people with which I work are vulnerable to a market economy that rewards people in the trade. If we had a secret place to enter data on birds that are at risk of disappearing, say G-bird, then I could pass on the data we are collecting in our many countries and projects. In the meantime, please contact me directly for information, or for ideas about what to do about this dilemma.