by Rosemary Low

In 2001 I started a campaign to raise funds for the Great Green Macaw. No conservation organisation would respond to the funding proposal made by George Powell who had spent years in Costa Rica trying to safeguard its future. His funds were depleted. He wrote to me that unless money could be found urgently, the project would shut down. So few pairs were left there that the outcome would almost certainly be extinction, which made me feel passionately that this could not be allowed to happen.

I started a fund-raising campaign in Parrots magazine. The outcome was that more than $25,000 was raised. It was used to support the programme, then managed by Guisselle Mongas and Olivier Chassot, which secured the macaw’s future. Actions taken included protecting nest sites and carrying out education programmes in Costa Rica and across the border in Nicaragua, to where the macaws migrate.

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