The zoo’s current curator of birds, Dr. Nancy Klam has just been in a project in central America. They’re discovering that the scarlet macaws in that area are doing poorly. That many of their chicks are not surviving, where they have two chicks, often one is lost. Nancy has learned that by taking the chicks and feeding them artificially for a while and getting their strength back up and putting them with pairs that are unsuccessful in breeding, which then rear them, they’re able to increase the population. I just got an email from her last week and the project is going well. We’re going to see projects like this all over the world. It was a wonderful project not long ago on the bald ibis in Italy and Switzerland. I was attending an IUCN meeting in Switzerland when, the chairman of the meeting got a call and said, “Bill, do you know how to handle lammergeiers?” And I said, “What for?” “Well, we’re getting ready to re-introduce some in Switzerland.” Was it Switzerland or the Italian Alps, because we were way up in the Alps.
