A multi-year study conducted by BirdLife International, “the avian authority” for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has confirmed that the gorgeous blue-feathered macaw, which was the inspiration for the Disney Pixar film Rio, has been confirmed as extinct in the wild. The bird had been on the red list of threatened species since 2001, after vanishing from its dwindling habitat. IUCN believes that 26,000 species of animals and plants are on the threatened red list. This raises alarms that a sixth mass extinction may be accelerating.
According to Wiki, the species had evolved in a specialized habitat—known as a gallery forest—that grows along a narrow drainage corridor as small as a few feet wide, along the Rio São Francisco, a river that abuts a landscape with very few trees and limited foliage, such as is seen in a desert or savanna. The bird nested, fed and roosted in the small Tabebuia tree. Logging in the specialized habitat doomed this magnificent creature to extinction, with only a known captive population of only 60-80 of the blue birds left worldwide.
“People think of extinctions and think of the dodo but our analysis shows that extinctions are continuing and accelerating today. Historically 90% of bird extinctions have been small populations on remote islands. Our evidence shows there is a growing wave of extinctions on continents, resulting from habitat loss and degradation driven by unsustainable agriculture and logging in particular.”
—Stuart Butchart, BirdLife International Chief Scientist
The authors note that the exhaustive and lengthy study was conducted over many years. IUCN studied 151 critically endangered avian species and found that eight had gone extinct, or extinct in the wild, since the beginning of this century.
BirdLife International reports further on the eight extinctions.
They recommend three species formerly considered ‘critically endangered (possibly Extinct)’ should now be reclassified as ‘extinct’, while the Spix’s macaw should be treated as ‘extinct in the wild’.
Of the eight species, it was recommended that three species should be re-classified as Extinct; the Cryptic Treehunter Cichlocolaptes mazarbarnetti and Alagoas Foliage-gleaner Philydor novaesi, two ovenbirds from North-east Brazil, and Poo-uli Melamprosops phaeosoma, formerly of Hawaii, which has not been seen in the wild since 2004 (the same year the last captive individual died). The data also suggests another four species should be reclassified as Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct), a category that indicates that the species is highly likely to be extinct, but further search efforts are required before we can definitively rule it to be Extinct.
These species are New Caledonian Lorikeet Charmosyna diadema (last sighted in 1987), Javan Lapwing Vanellus macropterus (1994), Pernambuco Pygmy-owl Glaucidium mooreorum (2001) and another Brazilian macaw, Glaucous Macaw Anodorhynchus glaucus (1998).
This clip from Rio 2 shows a flock of Spix’s Macaws in their native environment. Unfortunately, this fiction is now a far cry from the birds’ reality.
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