Songbirds silenced as Colombia fights wildlife trafficking

AUGUST 14, 2019

by Joshua Goodman

In this Aug. 5, 2019 photo, canaries caught from the wild by animal traffickers sing in their cages in a quarantined area of a wildlife center before being freed in Bogota, Colombia. Songbird competitions have been a pastime throughout the Caribbean for centuries, but trapping wildlife without a license is a crime in Colombia. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

The metal doors of a shoebox-sized cage open up and a bird tagged #811 launches into a giant aviary. The palm-sized finch performs a midair pirouette, lands on a willow branch and curiously twitches its saffron-colored head sideways, as if surprised by its good fortune.

"That's what it feels like to be free," said Juan Camilo Panqueba, a veterinarian at a quarantine center in Colombia's high Andean capital, far from the canary's natural habitat along the humid, Caribbean coast.

The moment of liberation contrasts with the dreadful conditions in which the finch was found. Three weeks ago, police in the capital seized 32 finches in a surprise raid on a cockfighting ring where a high-stakes, booze-filled songbird contest billed as "the clash of titans" on social media was taking place.

While sparring by way of song has been a pastime throughout the Caribbean for centuries, trapping wildlife without a license—even species like these saffron finches, or Sicalis flaveola, which are not threatened—is a crime in Colombia, though one that authorities ignored in a country overrun by drug cartels, leftist guerrillas and other armed groups

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Species Unseen for 47 Years Rediscovered Near Colombian Town Named for Miracles

Published by surfbirds on April 24, 2019 courtesy of American Bird Conservancy, surfbirds archive

The Antioquia Brushfinch, a rusty-crowned Colombian songbird described as a new species 12 years ago, based solely on old museum specimens, eluded scientists until it was documented for the first time in the wild in January 2018. This discovery will be published later this year in the scientific journal Cotinga, in an article by researchers Rodolfo Correa Peña, Sergio Chaparro-Herrera, Andrea Lopera-Salazar, and Juan L. Parra.

Previously known only from three museum specimens collected as recently as 1971, the Antioquia Brushfinch was originally classified as belonging to a more widespread brushfinch species.

The first living bird of this newly described species was originally observed by Rodolfo Correa Peña on Jan. 7, 2018, as he was walking to Sunday mass. Documenting photos were taken the same month. Since then, the Colombian researchers have found additional birds in four patches of remnant habitat, all within the municipality of San Pedro de los Milagros – which translates to Saint Peter of Miracles – in the department of Antioquia.

he Antioquia Brushfinch was first described by ornithologist Thomas Donegan in 2007, after a review of brushfinch specimens in South American and European collections. Donegan noticed three specimens labeled from San Pedro de los Milagros and “Antioquia” generally that were marked as representing the widespread Slaty Brushfinch, but looked different. Two of these specimens were undated, and one was collected in 1971. Many feared that the species “discovered” in the museum drawers was extinct, after several searches over the last 12 years failed to find it.

“Rodolfo Correa Peña’s rediscovery of the Antioquia Brushfinch – seeing it alive for the first time since it’s been declared a distinct species – was a miracle. And he first spotted the brushfinch on his way to Sunday mass!” says Wendy Willis, American Bird Conservancy’s (ABC’s) Deputy Director of International Programs. “It is also remarkable that this species occurs just outside the greater metropolitan area of Medellín, home to more than 3.7 million people, and that it has gone unnoticed until now.”

American Bird Conservancy has supported the research team’s efforts to find more populations of this brushfinch since October 2018, as part of a larger effort to rediscover and conserve “lost” birds. The search for new subpopulations, led by Sergio Chaparro-Herrera, continues. Additionally, the team is investigating the bird’s breeding behavior and the possible threat of nest parasitism by Shiny Cowbirds, which lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, often to the detriment of the hosts’ own young. This research is being conducted with support from a Skutch Research Award from the Association of Field Ornithologists.

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Critically Endangered Colombian bird rediscovered after 47 years

8/04/2019

Following observations in January 2018, Antioquia Brushfinch has been documented in the wild in Colombia for the first time since 1971.

The brushfinch, which was only formally described as a full species in 2007, based solely on old museum specimens, had eluded scientists until it was documented for the first time in almost 50 years.

The discovery was made by Rodolfo Correa Peña on 7 January, as he was walking to Sunday mass. Crucial photos were taken the same month and, since then, Colombian researchers have found additional birds in four patches of remnant habitat, all within the municipality of San Pedro de los Milagros – which translates to Saint Peter of Miracles – in the department of Antioquia. Fewer than 20 of the Critically Endangered passerines are thought to exist.

Following a review of brushfinch specimens in South American and European collections in 2007, Antioquia Brushfinch was first described by ornithologist Thomas Donegan. Donegan noticed three specimens labelled from San Pedro de los Milagros and 'Antioquia' were marked as representing the widespread Slaty Brushfinch, but they looked different. Two of these specimens were undated, and one was collected in 1971. As a result of this discovery many searches were undertaken in the following 12 years, though none yielded results.

Wendy Willis, American Bird Conservancy's (ABC's) Deputy Director of International Programs, said: "Rodolfo Correa Peña's rediscovery of Antioquia Brushfinch – seeing it alive for the first time since it's been declared a distinct species – was a miracle. And he first spotted the brushfinch on his way to Sunday mass! It is also remarkable that this species occurs just outside the greater metropolitan area of Medellín, home to more than 3.7 million people, and that it has gone unnoticed until now."

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Parakeet nest discovery hints at new conservation opportunity

29/01/2019

Rufous-fronted Parakeet, a threatened psittacine endemic to Colombia, has been recorded nesting inside a building for the first time, possibly offering a new conservation opportunity for this rare and range-restricted species.

An almost all-green, dainty parakeet just 18-19 cm in length, Rufous-fronted Parakeet inhabits the temperate tree-line and open paramo (grass-shrub zone) mainly between 3,000-4,000 m altitude in Colombia's Central Andes. The species is listed in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as 'Vulnerable' to extinction, and is included in a project of the Colombian NGO, Fundación ProAves, for the protection and recovery of threatened parrots of the Cordillera Central (Central Andes), which has been supported by Loro Parque Fundación since 2003.

The species' favoured habitat is contracting due to agricultural activities, especially cattle grazing and related burning. Farmers replace the native plants with grass, which is bad news for the paramo as cattle slowly erode the land, making it unfertile and poorer at retaining water. It may be that Rufous-fronted Parakeets can tolerate some habitat alteration, as they are sometimes observed feeding in fallow fields and areas altered by grazing. They are social birds which are usually observed in flocks, sometimes consisting of as many as 100 individuals. They feed on or near the ground, mostly taking grass seeds, as well as some small fruits and flowers of shrubs and bushes.

In February 2007, a field team at ProAves made the singular discovery of the first-ever nest of this species. It was constructed of moss and placed 18 m high in the canopy of a guayabo tree (Myrcianthes sp) growing in an open area of sub-paramo, at 3,000 m above sea level (asl). Observations by the ProAves biologists revealed that six parakeets visited the nest daily, which strongly suggests that the species can be a co-operative breeder. Remarkably, until the recent discovery of the nest in a building, the tree nest had remained the only documented nest of the species.

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In Colombia, birders find their version of Eden

March 13, 2018 by Florence Panoussian

Despite his small stature, 10-year-old Juan David Camacho has big dreams: pacing through Colombia's jungle with binoculars in tow, he aims to spot all the bird species his country offers.

It's a mighty goal: Colombia boasts the greatest number of bird types on the planet—1,920, or 19 percent of those on the planet—a veritable paradise for birders.

"We leave very early with our cameras, binoculars and tripods and we watch the birds until around noon, in silence," says the young boy—continuing to scan the area to make sure he doesn't miss a rare specimen perched on a branch in the forests near Cali.

Since his father first took him birdwatching three years ago, his love of searching for feathered friends has come to rival even his passion for football, a favored pastime in Colombia.

Once a month he journeys through the tropical forests surrounding Cali, the country's third largest city with some 2.5 million residents.

Nestled in the heart of the southwest's massive green expanse, the Valle del Cauca, and the Andes Mountains, the area counts 562 species of birds, "much more than anywhere in Europe", according to expert Carlos Wagner.

Read more at: 

Andean Condors poisoned in Colombia

12/02/2018

After last week’s large-scale poisoning of Andean Condors in Argentina was found to have been caused by Carbofuran, the Vulture Conservation Foundation (VCF) has reported another case of poisoning, this time from Colombia. Two condors were found dead in the country, where only around 100 individuals remain in the wild.

Poison is the biggest threat to vultures worldwide. This was the main conclusion of the Vulture Multi-species Action Plan, which was co-developed by VCF and has been recently endorsed by the Convention for Migratory Species (CMS). A significant part of this global action plan for vultures focuses on the fighting this threat.

In Europe, VCF is actively pursuing different lines to these ends, including a brand new project in the Balkans, where the organisation will be working and funding local partners in Croatia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Greece to try to eradicate this illegal and highly damaging practice.

In South America, Fundación Bioandina Argentina (FBA), which is leading the Andean Condor Conservation Program of Argentina, is implementing similar actions, as cases of poisoning have grown exponentially. In the last 13 months, at least 66 condors were killed by poison in several provinces of the country.

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The Search Is On For South America's ‘Lost Birds'

By Daniel Lebbin May 25, 2016

High in the Santa Marta Mountains of Colombia in early 2015, two guards from Fundación ProAves' El Dorado Reserve found the Blue-bearded Helmetcrest, a hummingbird nobody had seen for 69 years. The rediscovery of such lost birds is not as infrequent as one might guess. Finding them, as other ABC-funded expeditions have done in the past with the Pale-headed Brush Finch and other birds, can be vital to their conservation. It's hard to protect birds if you don't know where they live.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature currently ranks at least 24 species in the Americas as threatened even though the species have no known individuals in the wild nor surviving in captivity. Most of these species should probably be considered extinct. But some may still persist, living in areas that are difficult to search and where few people go.

To untangle this mystery and determine if the birds are still out there—and therefore deserving of our conservation attention—ABC is mobilizing resources and partners to conduct searches for some of South America's lost birds. We're starting with three: the Tachira Antpitta, the Turquoise-throated Puffleg, and the Kinglet Calyptura.

Read on … 

World Land Trust helps Fundacion ProAves in Colombia buy vital land for rare birds

The World Land Trust (WLT) has made a donation from its Action Fund to help the Fundación ProAves save important habitat in Colombia for the rare Santa Marta Parakeet.

The funds were added to donations from the American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and used to secure a property which will extend the El Dorado Reserve by 148 acres (60 hectares) before the April deadline set by the property owner. 

“We have been negotiating to buy this property for about five years,” said Alonso Quevedo, Executive Director, ProAves, “but the effort was absolutely worth it.

"The property links two forested areas and will allow us to create more breeding and foraging habitat for the parakeet along the San Lorenzo ridge, an area that contains the largest known parakeet population.”

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Hummingbird, thought extinct, rediscovered in Colombia

ByMICHAEL CASEYCBS NEWSMarch 20, 2015, 5:44 PM

Conservationists Carlos Julio Rojas and Christian Vasquez had gone into a Columbian mountain range looking to document fires burning in the fragile ecosystem.

Image credit: Carlos Julio Rojas / ProAves

They ended up rediscovering a hummingbird that had not been seen since 1946 and was believed to have gone extinct.

The duo earlier this month managed to snap the only known photographs of the blue-bearded helmetcrest.

As he hiked through the region's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta National Park, Rojas said he "saw the flash of a bird screeching past me and saw it perch on a bush nearby."

"I managed to take a quick photo of it before it flew off. I then reviewed the photo on the camera screen and immediately recognized the strikingly patterned hummingbird as the long-lost blue-bearded helmetcrest," said Rojas, whose discovery was first reported in the journal ProAves. "I was ecstatic. After reports of searches by ornithologists failing to find this spectacular species, Christian and I were the first people alive to see it for real."

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New species of tapaculo in South America

Date:

March 11, 2015

Source:

Central Ornithology Publication Office

Summary:

After being misidentified and sitting in a museum drawer for more than seventy years, a group of bird specimens collected in Colombia and Venezuela has been determined to represent a previously unknown species, now dubbed the Perijá Tapaculo (Scytalopus perijanus).

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122 species of Colombian bird face extinction, says new report

Posted on: 05 Jan 2015

What is arguably the world's greatest avian hot-spot is rapidly losing habitat and birds despite its renown.

A new study, The State of the Birds in Colombia 2014 – produced by a leading conservation group in Colombia, Fundación ProAves – reports that decades of deteriorating ecosystem conditions have led to 122 of the country’s 1,903 bird species now facing extinction.

“Our findings are troubling because these deteriorating avian conditions are occurring in Colombia, an area viewed by many as perhaps the richest country for birds in the world,” said Alonso Quevedo, Executive Director of ProAves. “Of equal importance, these findings provide an important warning about threats to our water, air and other natural resources and suggest that the health of our environment has clearly diminished.”

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Columbia Mountain Range Reserve Protects Rare Birds

A coalition of conservation groups have established a new protected area in one of Latin America’s most neglected ecosystems: the Colombian-side of the Serranía de Perijá mountain range. Following decades of bloody conflict and rampant deforestation, experts say only five percent of rainforest is left on the Colombian side of this embattled mountain range, which is home to a large number of birds found no-where else.

“Without this reserve, the chances are high that within a few years nothing would be left of the spectacular forests that once covered Colombia’s Serranía de Perijá,” said Paul Salaman, the CEO of Rainforest Trust, which helped create the new park, known as the Chamicero de Perijá Nature Reserve. The Rainforest Trust partnered with ProAves, which has worked in the region for over a decade, and Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC).

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Almost 2,000 bird species and a world record for Colombia

December 2013: For the first time the official numbers of bird species registered in Colombia has exceeded 1,900, according to the scientific publication Conservación Colombiana.

This represents a new world record and firmly establishes Colombia as the world's most biodiverse country.

This year, a sixth annual review was published through a collaboration of ornithological experts from Colombia, the USA and Europe, verifying the number of species registered within Colombia. A total of 1,903 species have now been recorded inside Colombia.

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Local and Endangered Birds of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia

By Marie-France Grenouillet

Colombia is one of the countries with the highest biodiversity on the planet, the highest number of animal and plant species per square kilometer anywhere in the world.

With 1871 bird species, it has the largest number of bird species of any country on earth, and this number continue to rise each year.  Based on a 2009 survey, 74 birds are endemic—prevalent in or peculiar to the locality.

Although smaller than the U.S. State of Connecticut, Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, is completely isolated from the Andes Mountains.  It’s a Biosphere Reserve and a National Park, overlooking the Caribbean coast of northern Colombia.

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta has 635 bird species—a third of the whole country—and contains the single highest concentration of endemic bird species (36) found on the planet.  It has more resident bird species than the continental USA, but 18 species are facing the risk of extinction at a global level

Birdwatching is carried out entering from Santa Marta to Minca and then to El Dorado Reserve in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, where most of the endemics can be spotted:

Read more at http://livinggreenmag.com/2013/04/08/mother-nature/local-and-endangered-birds-of-the-sierra-nevada-de-santa-marta-colombia/#FiZsiB387RVXXiDe.99

Cerulean warbler and other rare species to benefit from acquisition of key Colombian habitat

Pauxi Pauxi Reserve extended

January 2013. The Cerulean Warbler, a bird whose population has declined by about 70 percent in the last 40 years, and 25 other neotropical migrating birds are the key beneficiaries of a successful two-year-effort by American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and Fundación ProAves to purchase and protect key wintering habitat for the birds in Colombia, South America.

9 properties acquired
The conservation effort resulted in the acquisition of nine new properties. Those new properties now make up the western flank of the Pauxi Pauxi Reserve that was established in 2007 by the same partner groups and now totals about 4,470 acres.

The purchased area is located in north central Colombia, approximately 150 miles north of Bogota in an area of lush tropical vegetation. The newly acquired land is part of an imposing, mountainous outcropping called Cerro de la Paz, along the Magdalena River Valley west of the Andes Mountains, an area that has been heavily deforested due to agricultural and urban expansion.

Cerulean Warbler by Bill Hubick

Pauxi Pauxi Reserve
"As migratory birds head south through the degraded river valley, the Pauxi Pauxi Reserve is a forested haven. We are thrilled to expand available habitat for these weary avian travelers," said David Younkman, Vice President for Conservation at ABC.

"Cerro de la Paz and the Pauxi Pauxi Reserve is one of the best migrant hotspots in Colombia based on our surveys," said Alonso Quevedo, Executive Director of ProAves. "It is fantastic that our conservation efforts to protect endangered resident species, such as the Helmeted Curassow, can also ensure vital winter habitat for dozens of migratory species."

The Cerulean Warbler was formerly one of the most abundant breeding warblers in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys and elsewhere in the U.S., but is now one of the country's most imperiled migrant songbirds.

Cerulean Warbler numbers plummet by 70%
Overall, Cerulean Warbler numbers have plummeted by almost 70% since 1966. This elusive bird winters in the Andes and intermountain valleys, and breeds in North America from the Great Lakes region to Georgia, and west from Wisconsin to Louisiana, with particular concentrations in the Appalachians and Central Hardwoods region. Both its breeding and wintering habitat are being lost.

Read on:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/cerulean-warbler-colombia.html