Rare parrots return to Atlantic Forest fragment after decades of silence

Twenty brilliantly colored red-browed amazons took flight over a reserve holding one of the few remaining intact swaths of Atlantic Forest in Brazil. The green-and-red parrots had been missing from Alagoas state for generations. In January 2025, the birds returned home. Researchers say releasing the red-browed amazons (Amazona rhodocorytha) will help the species rebound and restore a dying ecosystem.

Only 3% of the Atlantic Forest remains in Alagoas, according to Luiz Fábio Silveira, deputy director of the University of São Paulo’s Museum of Zoology, making it one of the most threatened ecosystems on Earth. The Atlantic Forest fragments in Alagoas are failing because the animals that spread seeds have disappeared. According to Silveira, without these creatures, trees that depend on animals to spread their seeds are dying and being replaced by trees whose seeds travel on the wind.

The release into a thousand-hectare forest reserve in Coruripe, outside of the state capital, Maceió, is part of the Project for the Evaluation, Recovery and Conservation of Endangered Birds (ARCA), which Silveira leads. Red-browed amazons (Amazona rhodocorytha) before their release in to the Atlantic Forest fragment in Alagoas. Photo courtesy of Luiz Fábio Silveira. It s not just the animals, but their sounds that are returning to the forest, Silveira told Mongabay, describing videos sent by community monitors showing flocks of red-browed amazons flying through the reserve.

Resembling large lovebirds, red-browed amazons were once common enough to be among the first birds recorded when the first Europeans made landfall in what is today...This article was originally published on Mongabay