Spix's Macaw: The Race to Save the World's Rarest Bird [Hardcover]

Tony Juniper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 2003

Tony Juniper's heart-stopping inside account of the race to save a rare blue parrot, the last of its species, is a priceless addition to nature literature -- and a timely portrait of Earth's endangered wildlife.

In 1897, the Reverend F. G. Dutton lamented that "there are so many calls on a parson's purse, that he cannot always treat himself to expensive parrots." He was hoping to purchase a Spix's Macaw, a rare parrot found in a remote area of Brazil. Today, Dutton's search would be in vain.

By the turn of the century only one survivor, a lone male, existed in the wild. Spix's Macaw tells the fascinating story of a unique band of brilliant blue birds -- who talk, fall in love, and grieve -- struggling against extinction. By the second half of the twentieth century the birds had become more valuable than heroin, worth thousands of dollars on the black market. In 1990, only one was found to be living in the wild and an emergency international rescue operation was launched, calling on private collectors to come forward with their birds to mate with the last wild Spix's.

In a breathtaking display of stoicism and endurance, the loneliest bird in the world had lived without a mate for fourteen years, outwitting predators and poachers. Would he take to a new companion? Like humans, Spix's Macaws can't be forced to love, but the stakes were as high as they could be: the survival of one of the world's most beautiful birds.

Combining a thrilling detective story and a rich natural history book, Spix's Macaw tells the dramatic story of the rescue operation, and of the humans whose selfishness and greed brought a beautiful species to the brink of extinction. Tony Juniper, a leading British environmentalist, has written both a love story and an environmental parable for our times.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For the magnificent blue parrots of South America, beauty and intelligence have been a curse. These qualities, in addition to the birds' rare numbers, have made the animals highly attractive to human collectors. Despite a ban on endangered-parrot trading since 1975, smugglers have continued to trap and sell blue parrots-including the rarest, Spix's macaw-on the international market. By 1990, only one wild Spix's remained. Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth, recounts the riveting adventures of the team of specialists that finally documented the presence of this last wild bird in Brazil's remote northeast interior and launched efforts to try to protect it. He describes the forces that drive the black market in macaws-chiefly poverty, corruption and greed-and notes that "parrots are today part of an illegal trade in wildlife that ranks second in value only to the multibillion-dollar clandestine drugs and arms markets." Indeed, a rare parrot can fetch as much as $40,000. Juniper presents a fascinating overview of the long history of human-parrot relationships, which date to ancient times, and also describes the efforts to breed Spix's macaws in captivity. Juniper is an impassioned advocate for the world's rarest bird, and also demonstrates a deep understanding of the social issues involved in saving endangered wildlife. The situation for the Spix's remains precarious; whether it will share the fate of the dodo or eventually flourish again, as did the almost-extinct Przewalski's horse and European bison, depends on "human cooperation, foresight and generosity."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Blue is a rare color for land animals, and people have placed great value on blue animals since the earliest times. There are four blue species of the macaw, largest of parrots: one is probably extinct, one is extinct in the wild, and two are endangered. Juniper (Parrots: A Guide to the Parrots of the World , 1998) writes about the second species, the Spix's macaw. This species was reduced to as few as 24 individuals living in captivity. The quest to save the powder-blue parrot is revealed in the author's passionate tale of smuggling, politics, science. Probably always rare in their natural habitat, and fetching up to $40,000 on the black market, these birds have invariably been desirable by virtue of their scarcity. Exploring what little is known of the natural history of Spix's macaw, the history of its discovery and attempts to keep it in captivity, and the machinations of the international effort to breed the few remaining birds, Juniper keeps the reader riveted. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Atria (November 4, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074347550X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743475501
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,614,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars History of Spix's Macaw's Plight, Complete with Political Agenda., August 16, 2005

By 

mirasreviews (McLean, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spix's Macaw: The Race to Save the World's Rarest Bird (Hardcover)

Tony Juniper was a member of the 1990 expedition to Brazil that located the last Spix Macaw surviving in the wild, In "Spix's Macaw: The Race to Save the World's Rarest Bird", he tells the story of the species' history, its demise in the late 20th century, and efforts to preserve the Spix through captive breeding. The Spix's Macaw was always a rare bird, found only in the caraiba gallery woodlands of eastern Brazil. Named after Johann Baptist Ritter von Spix, a Bavarian naturalist who happened upon the bird in 1819 during a 4-year expedition to observe and catalog Brazil's fauna, the Spix Macaw was not observed in the wild again until 1903. But by then, captured Spix's Macaws were being exported to zoos and pet owners on several continents.

In exploring the scant history of its namesake, "Spix's Macaw" touches on the history of parrot-keeping and trading as well as the other blue Brazilian parrots: the Hyacinth, Glaucous, and Lear's macaws. The second half of the book addresses the efforts, politics, and progress in preserving the Spix's Macaw with the intention of restoring the species to the wild, including detailed accounts of how we got from having about 25 known living Spix's Macaws worldwide in the late 1980s to having over 60 by the year 2000. If that sounds promising, it is in the sense that it proves the birds can be bred with relative ease. But it's not if you consider the politics and posturing involved, which become obscenely obvious if you read this book.

Tony Juniper is a fluid writer who knows a lot about his subject and clearly cares about it, so "Spix's Macaw" is very readable. Unfortunately, the book's last two chapters are dedicated to demonizing the private owners of Spix's macaws, including those responsible for the breeding successes of the 1990s, and flogging the agenda of restoring the birds to Brazil and to their original habitat. Anyone who thinks that these initiatives are unreasonable or unproductive is apparently selfish, immoral, and actually criminal in the estimation of Tony Juniper. Juniper believes that forcibly removing the birds from their owners and handing them over to the entity that has had the least success in breeding them is the way to save the species. Brazil has had upwards of 35 years to organize breeding and conservation programs and has, instead, vacillated between indifference and incompetence. I wouldn't give Brazil a budgie. The international Recovery Committee didn't do much better, failing to ever produce a studbook and irresponsibly releasing a female Spix who was a known breeder back into her natural habitat -where she promptly died- while there were only 60 Spix's Macaws in existence! Only the death of the last wild Spix prevented them from releasing 4 more birds. Thank god for timely demises.

"Spix's Macaw" contains a lot of interesting information on the efforts to save this bird. Readers can decide for themselves if these efforts and Tony Juniper's agenda are misguided. But I was struck by the indifference to the birds themselves. For Brazil, which insists that all the world's Spix's Macaws -including those born elsewhere- are its "sovereign property", the macaws represent some sort of nationalism. Returning them to "the wild" is a battle cry for fanatic conservationists, who transform the birds plight into socio-political dogma. Private owners keep the birds for their own reasons. But no party in this book gives any indication of having an iota of respect for the creatures. The birds are eclipsed by every manner of agenda. Increasing the birds' numbers should be the primary goal, but it falls victim to Brazil's sweeping claims and self-righteous accusations. A pipe dream of reintroducing the Spix to its natural environment takes precedence over breeding. No one seems to know if the gallery forests could even support a flock of significant size, and, in any case, that habitat won't be there for long. It would indeed be ironic if a century from now parrot-lovers are thanking the private collectors and black marketeers of the 20th century for saving the Spix's Macaw from the fate that met its extinct cousin, the Glaucous macaw: Habitat Destruction. What the Spix's Macaw needs most is for the humans it depends on to swallow a heavy dose of realism.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TOTALLY AWESOME AND RAD BOOK!!!, November 12, 2006

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Spix's Macaw: The Race to Save the World's Rarest Bird (Hardcover)

This book is about the the wondeful and beatiful Spix's Macaw. I goes to show how people are so selfish. in the book it amazed me that even when 1 spix macaw was left in the wild, noone cared except a handfulof people. The great thing about this book is that it's not only about Spix's Macaws but about other almost extinct animals ( and not just bird) Well yah, I don't wanna give out the sad parts, like the long and boring reviews that are written above or under me on this page, because the ending is so much not what you expected. Don't worry they don't become extinct! But this book isn't for everybody, if you have to do it for a book report ---don't! Only people who like birds and appreciate natur. For me it was easy , because I know a lot about bird, but if your just reading this book, I guarantee you won't understand it unless you rush too the internet or books, to figure out what they said.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tony Juniper, Spix's Macaw: The Race to Save the World's Rar, May 25, 2005

By 

Samuel P. Menefee "Samuel Pyeatt Menefee" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Spix's Macaw: The Race to Save the World's Rarest Bird (Hardcover)

In almost every way, this book is a wonderful read. It is ostensibly about Spix's Macaw, a bird fluttering on the edge of extinction (although no specific evidence is offered that it is "the World's Rarest Bird" (see p. [iii])). At the same time, the book deals with parrots in general, considers avian extinctions where relevant, and makes us think deeply about mankind's relationship with Nature.

The section on "parrots in history" is particularly good, although it is here that Juniper pulls the one major bona fide boner of his work. The Emperor Heliogabulus did not rule from 222 to 205 B. C. (see p. 37), but rather from 218 to 222 A. D. It is interesting to note that the bird shown in the portrait of William Brooke, Baron Cobham, appears to be an unknown variety of parrot (see p. 40) and to find that several Caribbean macaws have vanished since the early days of exploration (at pp. 119-20). Juniper doesn't miss a beat in pointing out that many of the parrots allegedly carried by pirates may have been worth more than the loot they stole (see p. 121)! We are shown the place of parrots in Christian theology- one supposedly learned to recite The Lord's Prayer (at p. 44) and are informed that parrot tongues were occasionally eaten to cure speech impediments (at id.). It is therefore strange to find no mention of the role of the "parrot spy" for plantation masters in Black American folklore (see Richard M. Dorson, American Negro Folktales 120-23 (1968)) and not to have Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch mentioned until page 236.

Juniper is excellent in painting a portrait of the life of a Spix's Macaw, as well as providing information on parrot "hand-eye coordination" (see pp. 42-43), "dialects" (at pp. 44-45), and bonding with specific individuals (at p. 50; I remember one Brazilian friend telling me of a family parrot who loved him, but who was finally given away because of his hostile attitude towards the boy's mother). What make's Juniper's book special, however, is the information and vignettes it contains: Tony Silva, the renowned breeder, whose bird-smuggling activities brought him a prison term (at pp. 77-80), the wildlife market at Duque de Caxias (at p. 89), the raid on a Paraguayan wildlife dealer's house (at pp. 139-41), and the tragicomic dance between Brazilian authorities and breeders to save Spix's Macaw (see pp. 160 ff.). At the same time, Juniper does not (and perhaps legally cannot) name names to accompany all the rumors of foreign bird ownership (see pp. 153-54) and fails to comment on what seems to be an obvious parallel between the world's first endangered species studbook (for the European Bison- started in 1932- see p. 159) and the political events which led to World War II and the Holocaust. Those who wish to read more in the area will be hindered by the fact that the volume has no bibliography.

What Spix's Macaw does do, however, is to bring home the poignancy of this dwindling species and to make us view its travails in a larger context. Despite minor faults, this book is a wonderful addition to any environmental bookshelf, and no one who reads the volume will put it down unmoved.

Samuel Pyeatt Menefee