The Blue Macaw that was one of the protagonists in the film Rio and Blu believed he was the only one of his sort. Unfortunately, at this moment this is true.
This movie, which is animated, tells the story of Spix’s Macaw. Macaw is a bird from Brazil that travels from Minnesota to Rio de Janeiro.
He is presented as the last male bird of his kind. Luckily, he comes across the previous female bird of his nature; they fall in love and eventually have a baby. Therefore, they succeeded in saving their species from extinction.
Although the animated movie has a happy ending, this is not the case in real life. A few years ago, more precisely seven years ago, this parrot was put in danger of extinction. At this moment, according to the protocol, this parrot is no longer known in the wild.
After conducting a study, BirdLife International declared that this parrot could be only found in confinement. The Macaw parrot is not an adaptive species. He cannot quickly adapt to the new and changed environment. Its extinction is because of the loss of the forests and habitats.
There are several reproducing programs for animals, but there is no evidence that this parrot is in some of them.
The book “Spix’s Macaw: The Race to Save the World’s Rarest Bird” By Tony Juniper was published in the 1980s. The purpose of this book was to address the severe situation regarding this parrot. However, this book did not manage to make people more aware of the problem.
Furthermore, the BirdLife International had statistically shown that plus seven different species are on the edge of extinction. Five of the previously mentioned are from South Africa and suffer from deforestation and people’s intrusion. Also, they pointed out that three species no longer exist. These are the cryptic tree-hunter and the Alagoas foliage gleaner from Brazil and Poo-Uli from Hawaii.
Stuart Butchart, a scientist in charge in BirdLife, and the lead author of the paper says:
“Ninety per cent of bird extinctions in recent centuries have been of species on islands. However, our results confirm that there is a growing wave of extinctions sweeping across the continents, driven mainly by habitat loss and degradation from unsustainable agriculture and logging.”
Consequently, it can be concluded that people are responsible for these extinctions.
Why do we do that? Are we going to stop sometime soon? When are we going to start appreciating and respecting animals’ life and privateness?
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