Laura is a woman whose caregivers do not know how old she is. Since 2021, she has been living alone in quarantine due to her behavior. She is very disturbed and has wounds in her lower chest area that she self-destructs due to pain or stress. She tolerates women, but becomes aggressive if a man tries to touch her. And he sings almost all the time.
“They can’t tell us what they’ve been through,” says veterinarian Alice Soares, in front of the birdhouse where the real parrot (Amazona aestiva) lives, at the Center for Wildlife Conservation and Management (CeMaCAS) in Parque Anhanguera, in São Paulo. “But sometimes we can get an idea of what their lives have been like so far.” “He’s a completely traumatized bird.”
Instead of uttering sounds typical of its species, which have no rhythm or mimic human syllables, the parrot has been trained to endlessly imitate the São Paulo football club anthem. This is a classic sign that they have been removed from the wild and fallen into an illegal network that smuggles colorful Brazilian birds into the hands of curious people or bird collectors.
In the quarantine corridor of CeMaCAS, scented with various fruits that feed an orchestra of birds, Laura is the only one who has earned a name. It is one of tens of thousands of wild animals seized in cases of trafficking or illegal possession, and placed in specialized facilities throughout Brazil for rehabilitation. Most of the patients are birds, including species that are now at risk of extinction.
For the macaw and its neighbors — macaws, maracanas, red-fronted jandayas, lily macaws and many others — the challenge is to relearn how to be an animal. Many of them no longer know how to stop hitting their beaks on the bars due to stress. Or they are afraid of flying because they have forgotten how to spread their wings.
Parrots for one hundred riyals
In 2024 alone, another 60,000 wild animals were transferred to 25 wild animal inspection centers (SETAS), run by the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama) across Brazil. Animals rescued from urban areas and roads or voluntarily surrendered are also sent to these facilities, as well as other public or private facilities.
In CeMaCAS, from São Paulo City Hall, 1,237 animals found refuge, from January to July this year, after being captured. The volume of animals removed from trade or illegal possession and sent there increased by 34% between 2021 and 2024.
True parrots, such as the Laura, are traditionally one of the species most at risk due to the smuggling of wild animals for domestic consumption, as they are known as the most skilled “talkers” of the national fauna.
They can even be sold for around 100 riyals at the initial end of the smuggling network, generally in the central-western or northeastern regions. Or 10 times more expensive for last-in-chain buyers in urban centers in the South and Southeast.
From 1988 to 2024, authorities confiscated an estimated 12,500 puppies from the hands of traffickers in Mato Grosso do Sul (MS) alone, according to calculations by ecologist Glaucia Seixas.
“This does not represent 10% of what actually came out of nature, because the police cannot intercept all the animals,” he explains. She is the founder of the True Parrot Project, which has already built 450 artificial nests in MS, as compensation for the destruction of natural nests by smugglers.
“Clear the ice”
The unfortunate animals never reach the end of their rehabilitation journey, which is a return to their natural habitat – or at least to the area most likely to be caught.
According to Ibama, three out of four of the 330,000 animals, whether trafficked or not, that Setas has taken in in the past five years have been returned to the wild. Nearly two in ten die.
From January to June this year, 13,000 animals were released, equivalent to just under half of those that entered the screening system in the same period. Among those repatriated, 48% were arrested in anti-human trafficking operations.
Even with results achieved, the work of those who only care about trafficked animals, which are the most difficult to rehabilitate, sometimes feels like “scraping the ice.” “Many of the puppies that are trafficked do not even survive unhygienic means of transportation. It is very sad,” continues veterinarian Alice.
In the case of recently captured birds, she explains, deep injuries, bleeding and fractures caused by trampling in small, crowded spaces are common. Some become blind due to corneal ulcers or malnutrition due to lack of water and food. Others die from stress or lack of oxygen along the way.
The exciting image of a bird spreading its wings and flying towards the horizon after a difficult and successful treatment is not a guarantee of success.
“An animal not only needs to survive, but it also needs to interact with others and form a community,” Seixas says. “We also have to believe that it can teach its changing behaviors to other individuals, such as searching for food in trash or approaching humans.”
A type besieged by the world
When animal trafficking crosses borders, it creates an additional problem: managing populations that spread across the globe, making reintroduction into the wild more difficult.
Hyacinth parrots (Cyanopsitta spixii) know this well. Native to a small area of Bahian Caatinga, this rare parrot became extinct in the wild in 2000 as a result of habitat loss and capture for international trade. It has become a status symbol among collectors, as it was considered an exotic bird from the tropics, and is said to be worth hundreds of thousands of riyals on the illegal market.
Thus, the Brazilian state has partly lost direct control over the conservation of the more than 300 Spikes’ parrots remaining today. Released from the wild or bred in captivity, they have become dependent on human care in many countries.
In the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Brazil in 2001 required that any transfer of Spix’s parrots obtain its approval, in coordination with national population management efforts.
“This plan seeks to treat all animals – both in Brazil and abroad – as part of a single population, focusing exclusively on species conservation. The goal is to avoid isolated actions that could harm the collective effort,” the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio) explained to DW.
Deadly virus threat
After their first return to Brazil, eleven pink macaws have soared freely in the skies of Bahia from 2022 until this month. The release was the result of a reintroduction program in Kuroka, which began six years ago in cooperation with a German organization, which at the time kept at least 146 Spix’s parakeets at its headquarters on the outskirts of Berlin, out of 160 extant in the world. But recently, it turned out that the reintroduction of this substance was not successful at all.
After being recovered for testing in early November, all of the released birds showed the presence of the deadly Circovirus, the pathogen that causes psittacine beak and feather disease.
The outbreak will also affect a breeding site housing 92 other Spix’s parrots in Bahia, which ICMBio attributed to non-compliance with biosafety standards by the company that runs the site.
Criadouro Ararinha-Azul (formerly BlueSky), responsible for the installations, was fined R$1.8 million by ICMBio. The company says it has not been able to access reports of parrot contamination, but is taking “the best measures taking into account the safety of the birds and the operational limitations of the breeding facility.”
However, after this episode, the free trial for the eleven leading parrots has ended for the time being. The release of the new collection, which was scheduled for last July, has also been suspended. There are 27 other specimens of this species in the São Paulo Zoo.
Respond through education
Professional observers regret that there is no database to map seizures of trafficked animals nationally or an up-to-date estimate of the volume of animals illegally removed from the wild.
For Juliana Machado Ferreira, executive director of Freeland Brasil, the country needs a national strategy to combat wildlife trafficking, as others have done in the Americas. In 2014, the United States under Barack Obama, for example, launched an approach that envisions a tripartite between strengthening law enforcement, reducing demand for trafficked animals, and expanding international cooperation.
“Brazil is making a tremendous effort,” says Ferreira. “But it is still far below the minimum necessary. We need more SETA, resources and people, because the demand is huge.” “We are talking about an expensive device, and we as a society are paying the bill for those who promote trafficking. Because there are only those who sell because there are those who consume.”
Ecologist Glaucia Seixas calls for a change of direction in the Brazilian strategy, with greater emphasis on monitoring nature and raising awareness among potential consumers. “Rehabilitation is expensive, difficult and does not always work. Medium- and long-term monitoring is essential, something that few institutions are able to do.”
Currently, 1,254 Brazilian animal species and subspecies are threatened with extinction, including 257 birds. Another 337 animal species are considered endangered, meaning they could be officially threatened in the near future.