An ambitious ‘refaunation’ project is bringing the much-loved birds and other lost species back to the city’s national park
I
mages of the iconic blue-and-yellow macaw can be spotted all over Rio de Janeiro. Yet the real thing has been seen so rarely in the Brazilian city that some wondered if it ever really existed there at all.
The French explorer Jean de Léry first described an abundance of the giant, colourful parrots around Indigenous tribes in the 16th century, and the Austrian naturalist Johann Natterer sighted the Ara ararauna in the city in 1818.
After that, the record goes blank. Experts say the species was almost certainly wiped out by deforestation, along with the tapirs, jaguars and peccaries that once roamed the forests surrounding the city.
