Preserving the pionus

A South American parrot in danger of losing too much ground finds a champion in newly minted conservationist Russ Shade

THE PIGEON-SIZE pionus may never be the poster bird for exotic parrots facing extinction. Compared with cockatoos and macaws, it’s small and relatively plain looking. Not many people keep it as a pet. Moreover, it's not even on the endangered species list. Yet.

Apache the bronze-winged pionus is the unofficial mascot of the new Pionus Parrots Research Foundation.

But the South American hookbill is losing native habitat so fast it's headed for trouble, says Russ Shade. And that bothers Shade, a small-scale pionus breeder who has discovered a new calling in life: conservation.

Shade founded the Pionus Parrots Research Foundation last year to conduct primary research on wild pionuses, something that’s never been done before. Land procurement was at the bottom of his to-do list, but he's discovered that it's hard to separate research from conservation.

“There’s so little primary forest left, so as soon as you start looking for these birds, you’re confronted with conservation issues,” he says.

Farmers in Mindo, Ecuador, where the Foundation has conducted its research so far, consider the local coral-billed and bronze-winged pionuses “trash” birds. Over the last few decades they've forced most of the parrots out of their lowland habitat ever higher up the mountain slopes.

That's made finding pionus to study more difficult than Shade first anticipated.

The pionus is losing ground elsewhere, too, notes Shade. Forty years ago the white-capped variety ranged from the tip of Venezuela hundreds of miles south to Peru. Now it occupies a one- or two-hundred-mile stretch in Ecuador.

In eastern Brazil, home of the dusky and Maximilian’s pionuses, cattle ranches have displaced much of the birds’ habitat, and in Colombia the United States is spoiling habitat by spraying herbicides as part of the war on drugs.

Health riddle
Six years ago, Shade, formerly a free-lance technical writer, wasn't sure he even liked birds.

Shade’s wife, Janice, brought home a pair of finches, then parakeets, and began “hiding them around the house” from her disapproving husband. “It drove me nuts,” recalls Shade.

When Janice decided she wanted a bigger parrot to add to their growing number of pet birds, the Shades bought a white-capped pionus they saw advertised in a classified ad.

Farming pushes the pionus' cloudforest habitat in Ecuador farther up the slopes each year.

Shade was “completely captivated” by the new addition, and within the year the couple began breeding bronze-winged pionuses.

A health problem in his flock set Shade on the path to conservation work. One of his pionus hens died of visceral gout, a devastating condition that can reduce the kidneys to “hamburger.”

After researching the problem, Shade came to the conclusion that an all-pellet diet might be to blame. When he switched his flock to a more varied diet, the affliction went away.

But the episode stuck in his mind, and Shade became curious about diet and other habits of pionus in the wild. In 1999, he decided to formalize his efforts by creating a research group.

The PPRF includes an 11-member board, about 150 newsletter subscribers, one or two rotating graduate students who help with field work, and the Ecuadorian husband-and-wife birding team of Dr. Jane Lyons and Vinicio Perez. Nonprofit status is pending.

Garage sale fund-raising
Shade sold off "old junk" in his attic and solicited other pionus enthusiasts via e-mail to raise the $4,000 he needed to make the PPRF’s first three trips to Ecuador.

The group got very lucky its first afternoon in Mindo, he remembers.

“We stumbled onto a cornfield where there were about 30 bronze-winged pionus in a tree. For that whole first study, we watched what they did and wrote it all down. It was the first time this information had ever been recorded.”

On their second trip to Mindo, the researchers weren’t as fortunate and had to walk miles to find large numbers of the birds.

Although not welcome in the cornfields, coral-bill pionuses are popular pets in the village of Mindo, Ecuador.

In some respects, the pionus appears to be very adaptable, Shade notes. “They’re not as insistent on having primary forest. They will eat corn and they’ll fly right into town to take fruit off trees. They’re not afraid of people like your other South American parrots are.

“But they nest in hollowed-out palm trees. They’re a lot taller than other trees in the rainforest so it’s a good, safe place for them. They can see people and other predators. Development takes these palm trees down, and some trees take 30 to 40 years or even 200 years to grow.”

First land purchase
So far, the PPRF doesn’t have much money set aside for purchasing land in Mindo, just $1,000 from a memorial fund set up for a member who died last year and earnings Shade anticipates from his first book, The Practical Pionus.

He hopes to raise more when he leads a 7-day ecotour to Mindo next summer at $1200 per participant. Corn fields will be planted to attract pionuses so visitors will be sure to see the birds.

“They’re really fun to see in the wild. Their behavior is so similar to what they do in captivity. The first thing pionuses do when you give them a shower is to turn upside down. When you see a flock of 20 or 30 do that, it’s pretty cool.”

Fortunately, the PPRF won’t have to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase land in Ecuador, where one acre costs about $50.

PPRF founder Russ Shade: Looking for reserve land for the pionus.

The first land the PPRF will buy as a protected reserve for the pionus probably will be on a ridge north of Mindo where the birds breed, says Shade. Next summer, the PPRF will capture its first birds and tag them for tracking.

In the meantime, Shade continues to introduce himself to fellow ornithologists and learn the ropes of research and conservation.

“I don’t have any scientific training; I was an English major in college, for crying out loud. But by combining our efforts with Jane's, who is a scientist, and (doctoral candidate) Mark Ziembicki, who’s in training to be a scientist, we’re getting respect from both sides of the bird world.”

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