Mexico’s Long Road to a Scarlet Macaw Revival

An environmental politician, a small Mexican nonprofit, and a network of guardians in Chiapas are helping Mexico’s last Scarlet Macaws survive the twin threats of deforestation and poaching.

From the Winter 2025 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now.

Every morning, with the first glim­mer of daylight, the sky around the Chajul Biological Station in the southernmost state of Chiapas in Mexico is filled with the cries and raspy calls of the Scarlet Macaw. As the day gets lighter, and if it doesn’t rain, about 80 macaws fly in from the surrounding jungle to perch in the trees, waiting for their first meal of the day.

While they wait for Mario Lombera, a worker at the biological station, to put out peanuts for them to eat, the macaws take advantage of the opportunity to socialize. They groom each other and make soft chattering sounds. The macaws recognize each other through their daily interactions, even though most people wouldn’t be able to tell the birds apart. But Lombera, who’s been feeding these birds daily for the past 30 years, says one member of the flock stands out—la viejona, or “the old lady.”

“La viejona has a peculiar way of flying. That is why I can recognize her within the group,” says Lombera. “Also, up close, you can see that the pattern of the feathers differs from the rest.”

La viejona has been coming to the biological station for meals for the past 20 years. She arrived at Chajul when she was one or two years old, after being rescued from an illegal wildlife trafficking oper­ation in a raid carried out by authorities of Mexico’s Federal Attorney for Envi­ronmental Protection. At the time of her rescue, her feathers had been cut, and she did not know how to fly or get food on her own, because she had been snatched out of the nest when she was a baby.

“It took her more than a year to recover and learn to fly,” says Lombera. That’s why la viejona flies a bit differ­ently and looks a bit different, he says; she has scars from her past.

Today she is one of nearly 250 macaws that have been released into the Lacandon rainforest, crucial additions to the last viable population of this endangered subspecies left in Mexico. The macaw reintroductions were made possible by Natura y Ecosistemas Mexicanos, a nonprofit group founded by biologists to collaborate with local communities to save these birds and this remnant rainforest. Collaboration with the people of the Marqués de Comillas communities bordering the jungle is the key to keeping macaws in the skies and trees on the ground here, says Julia Carabias, a cofounder of Natura and former Secretary of the Environment, Natural Resources, and Fisheries (Mex­ico’s equivalent of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior).

The 70-year-old Carabias is a conser­vation hero in Mexico, a legend who con­fronted those who invaded the Lacandon rainforest for illegal clearcutting. Even as she was being held captive by kid­nappers, she spoke passionately about preserving the jungle and the macaws, because protecting the ecosystem is in the best interest of the people. Indeed, she says, the conservation movement here is successful because of the people.

“From my point of view,” Carabias says, “it is impossible to claim to con­serve if we do not have the involvement of the communities that own the land.”

From Slingshots to Binoculars

Soon after she helped establish Natura y Ecosistemas at the Chajul Biological Station in 2005, Carabias saw how she needed to change people’s minds about the macaws while leading a school tour.

“I was with a little boy about eight years old, and when we saw the tree in front of us, there was a macaw perched there,” Carabias recalls. It was la viejona. “When he saw her, the boy reached behind his pants and pulled out his slingshot. I instantly grabbed it, turned to the others, and asked how many of them had a slingshot.”

“Many of them did,” she says.

About a decade earlier, during her term as the federal environment secre­tary under Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, Carabias was fighting to protect the jungle around Chajul from rampant clearcutting. This was rainforest that had, on paper, been set aside in 1978 as the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. But in reality, the reserve was being invaded by farmers who cut trees to open up areas for agriculture.

During her term as environment sec­retary, Carabias successfully reduced the number of invasions into the biosphere, by lobbying the president’s office. “We succeeded in getting the government to reverse the policies that favored illegal encroachment into the reserve,” she says.

But policy victories, she knew, could be temporary—subject to change with a new administration. Lasting change, she thought, would only come from convincing the people living along the biosphere reserve of the value of standing rainforest.

There isn’t much tropical rainforest left in Mexico. More than 80% of the original tropical rainforest cover in the country has been lost, much of it in the last 40 years. And yet, what’s left secures invaluable biodiversity. The Lacandon rainforest (which is partially protected within the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve) constitutes much less than 1% of Mexico’s overall land territory, yet it contains 33% of all bird species (including Harpy Eagles and Red-capped Manakins) and 24% of all mammals (including jaguars and tapirs) found in the country.

The Scarlet Macaws that live in Lacandon rainforest are a subspecies (Ara macao cyanopterus) that ranges across the Selva Maya region of south­ern Mexico, Belize, and northern Guate­mala. They are larger than the Scarlet Macaws that range from Costa Rica to Brazil, and their plumage coloration differs a bit—with blue among the yellow bands on their wing feathers.

Historically the Scarlet Macaw in Mexico ranged from Lacandon north to the state of Tamaulipas, but today there are just 1,000 macaws left in the country—almost all living in the single stretch of rainforest in extreme southern Chiapas. The Scarlet Macaw is protected as an endangered species in Mexico, but even those macaws in Lacandon might not be alive today if not for the arrival of a butterfly biologist to the region in the 1970s.

Javier de la Maza came to this jungle to study the extraordinary biodiversity of more than 800 butterfly species, and he became inspired to protect this for­est. He secured the funding to establish the Chajul Biological Station, and went on to serve as the founding president of the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas in the Zedillo administration, along with Carabias. After their stints in the federal govern­ment, de la Maza and Carabias teamed up to found the nonprofit Natura y Ecosistemas as an environmental group aimed at protecting the Lacandon, with the Chajul station as the group’s headquarters inside the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve.

When it came to protecting the Scar­let Macaws of this jungle, Carabias and de la Maza discovered that poaching was an even greater threat to the bird’s existence than deforestation. Nests were being looted for macaw chicks that were smuggled into illegal trafficking for the pet trade. Each macaw chick can bring a profit of up to $500 after sale, with organized crime groups trafficking the birds throughout Mexico and even as far away as Asia. A single macaw is worth about one and a half times the average monthly salary in Chiapas, which is why Carabias emphasizes to local people that the value of wild macaws, and wild jungle, is worth something greater.

It’s a value that was tested in 2014, when a new wave of forest invasions into Lacandon intensified. Carabias was leading Natura’s work with local communities to protect the jungle from those attempting to burn it to create new settlements. One April night, after a rough day of fieldwork conducting biological surveys with college student volunteers, Carabias went to bed, only to be jolted awake a few hours later by loud knocking on her door and the shouts of unknown men. As she went outside, she found her students and the biological station’s guards lying on the ground. The men covered her face and forced her onto a boat, taking her to a remote area of the rainforest.

After three days, she came to realize that her captors weren’t sure about how to get a ransom, so she started speaking to them about who she was and what Natura stood for. She talked about the dangers to the community from losing more of the jungle and, most importantly, about the projects Natura was running to help local communities thrive without destroying the forest. After hearing her out, they released her and she returned to Chajul, dehydrated and exhausted, but safe.

Natura’s sustainable-tourism devel­opment projects include the establishment of a butterfly farm, an eco-park, and a restaurant—all of which generate income, jobs, and opportunities for families in the area without decimating the ecosystem.

“We are trying to recover habitat, prevent deforestation from increasing,” says Carabias, “and ensure that by doing so, people can live better.”

Twenty years after Carabias confis­cated the slingshots from the children who wanted to shoot birds in Lacandon, she has helped create a camp for stu­dents from local schools and formed a group—called Guacaguardianes, or “guardians of the macaws”—to inspire new generations in biodiversity conser­vation. Some of those little boys Cara­bias met in 2005, she says, have grown into men who are some of Lacandon’s strongest protectors, advocating for the forest in their communities and working with municipal authorities on local policies.

“These children exchanged their slingshots for binoculars,” she says. “Today, they are guides and guardians.”

Protection by the People

The small villages of Marqués de Comillas are green and relatively sim­ple. The houses are made of concrete; some half-built, and others adorned with colorful flowers. Even in the rainy season, the sun is intense and hot right from the early morning. José Quin­tana—a grandfatherly man in his 60s, known locally as “Don Chepe”—is one of the most respected leaders among these villages.

“In his community, they have a tre­mendous moral respect for him,” says Carabias.

And so, Carabias has made Don Chepe a leader of a community mon­itoring group that regularly ventures out into the jungle month after month to collect crucial information about the numbers and whereabouts of Scarlet Macaws around the biosphere reserve.

A Short Film About Mexico’s Macaws

Watch Conservation and Recovery of the Scarlet Macaw, a film by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Center for Conservation Media, created in partnership with Natura y Ecosistemas Mexicanos and acclaimed wildlife photographer Tim Laman.

“We cover several transects on land and by river,” says Don Chepe proudly. “Once a month, we count how many macaws we see, whether on the reserve or community side. We also record other parrots, herons, and birds of prey.”

Natura relies on the people of Marqués de Comillas in its operations to effectively protect the remaining Lacandon rainforest and prevent extirpation of the Scarlet Macaw in Mexico. A network of local collaborators handles everything from driving boats and feeding birds to managing supplies and conducting monthly point-count surveys.

The collaborators work closely with Diego Noriega, who was recruited to join the Chajul Biological Station in 2012, after graduating from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City, where he was a student in a biology class taught by Carabias. Noriega arrived with the charge to strengthen Natura’s rela­tionships with the communities of the Marqués de Comillas. Today he is the coordinator, overseeing a team of 14 local people in the program’s activities.

In addition to the macaw surveys, Noriega’s team operates the crucial Scarlet Macaw captive rescue and release program that has provided a significant boost to the regional macaw population. According to Natura, only about 20% of the wild Scarlet Macaw population reproduces yearly. With such limited reproduction, the poaching of chicks from nests for the illegal pet trade can almost completely snuff out the recruitment of new generations into the macaw population. Noriega says that today nest looting is the primary threat to the existence of the Scarlet Macaw in Mexico. He estimates that around 100 wild-born macaws are stolen from the nest and sold on the black market as pets yearly.

In order to relieve the poaching pressure on Lacandon’s Scarlet Macaws, Natura is executing a radical strategy.

“We were forced to disrupt the natural process,” says Carabias, as she describes why the Natura macaw rescue and release program is necessary.

When nesting season starts in Janu­ary, the monthly surveys conducted by 14 community monitors, including Don Chepe, identify macaw nesting sites within the reserve and on private lands. This past breeding season, the team monitored around 16 macaw nests, most within plots of land owned by locals. Noriega says that often it’s the locals who alert the community monitors to the presence of a macaw nest.

“They let us know when they detect a pair of macaws in a tree within their land,” says Noriega. “They choose the option of calling us so that we can monitor the nests to prevent them from being looted.”

If Natura biologists determine that a macaw nest’s location is safe, then they do nothing more than monitoring to track whether or not chicks successfully fledge. But most of the time, Noriega says, the macaw nests are deemed to be at risk from looting, and it’s a race to get the eggs out of the nests before the poachers get there.

After extraction by Natura biolo­gists, the macaw eggs are taken to a laboratory for incubation. When they hatch, the macaw chicks are fed a special porridge—made from ground puppy food, powdered baby cereal, fruit purée, peanut butter, and hot water—several times per day to promote healthy weight gain. At about 10 to 12 weeks old, the birds strengthen their wings as Noriega and his team take them outside to make short flights around the grounds of the Chajul Bio­logical Station. Then after around 90 days, they are free to come and go from the station as they begin to join up with other macaws in the wild.

During the 2023–24 breeding season, Natura cared for and set free 27 juvenile Scarlet Macaws. The Natura commu­nity monitoring surveys show that the interventions for captive breeding have boosted the local macaw population. Ten years ago the high counts along the border of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve and the Marqués de Comillas communities tallied 105 Scarlet Macaws; last August those same transects recorded 140 macaws.

According to Carabias, the project “has been essential to prevent the [Scar­let Macaw in Mexico] from becoming extinct.”

According to Noriega, the willing­ness of locals to call Natura and invite the safeguarding of macaw nests and eggs has been helped by the Mexican federal government, which provides funds for payment of environmental services through the National Forestry Commission to landowners who protect a macaw nest.

But those payments aren’t the only, or even the primary, reason that people call Natura, he says.

“Although they receive monetary compensation, the people who call us are convinced they do not want that nest depredated,” Noriega says. “They know that it will be looted if it is not intervened in. If they were doing it for the money, they could sell the nest to looters for more money.”

The shift in local attitudes has been striking, says Carabias, who recalls the early 2000s when her project team first discussed conservation plans with the community—and were met with a stigma toward those who did not cut down for­est to produce livestock or crops.

Today, says Carabias, “it is a pride to be the owner of the forest” that is home to Scarlet Macaws.

“A Very, Very Big Emotion”

After Javier de la Maza passed away in 2023 at the age of 65, Julia Carabias has been carrying on their vision for Natura kindled two decades ago, though the challenges are different today. As drug cartels struggle for control of the border between Mexico and Guatemala, the tentacles of organized crime have crept into the illegal pet trade—increasing the pressure for macaw nest looting.

That’s why the eager involvement of locals is vital, so that Natura biologists can hear about each breeding season’s new macaw nests and can rescue the eggs before looters find them.

“Safety is first,” says Noriega. “We don’t want to interact with the poachers.”

It’s a sense of safety that keeps the fledgling Scarlet Macaws coming back to the Chajul Biological Station for sev­eral weeks after being released into the wild, to keep getting meals and to check in with their human former caretakers “Here is number 64,” says Don Chepe, as one of the tagged macaws descends to the feeder platform to feast on peanuts. “I haven’t seen you for a few days,” he whispers to the bird, as she greets him by biting his cap.

In a way, these interventions in the nests and the constant watch over the macaws’ well-being have forged a bond between the people of the Marqués de Comillas and the birds—almost like a family.

“It’s like [the macaws] are people … just like babies, they need special care as they grow,” says Griselda, Don Chepe’s daughter, who has been helping her dad at the biological station. “Every day is different. All of that brings a very, very big emotion.”

As a scientist, Carabias knows that humanizing wildlife is something to be avoided. But she acknowledges that the emotional attachment people form with Scarlet Macaws can be beneficial, as it drives a deeper commitment to protecting the birds and other wild­life of the jungle. She says it helps remind people that they are part of the rainforest, too.

“We must remember that we are not a species with the right to decide what stays on the planet and what does not,” says Carabias. “The Lacandon is the most important site regarding biodiver­sity, ecosystem services, and providing the space for life to continue evolving.”

The life’s work of Carabias, de la Maza, and many others now from the Marqués de Comillas has created a space above a rainforest here for a Scarlet Macaw tagged number 64, for la viejona, and for hundreds of other macaws to fly free—their raspy calls still echoing across Mexican skies.