Smuggled parrot eggs lead to rare breeding success

Fifteen years after Austrian customs seized 74 parrot eggs, Schönbrunn Zoo has successfully bred three Rotspiegel Amazons naturally for the first time, ORF reports.

Customs officers confiscated the eggs at Vienna-Schwechat Airport in 2011 and handed them to Schönbrunn Zoo. The eggs hatched into Rotspiegel Amazons and Jamaican Amazons.

Schönbrunn Zoo director Stephan Hering-Hagenbeck described the successful rearing of the three chicks by their parents as a “special milestone”. He said the case had developed from illegal wildlife trafficking into a significant conservation success.

The zoo said the new arrivals were especially important at European level. Rotspiegel Amazons are now kept at only one other European zoo, Prague Zoo. Schönbrunn has the only breeding pair and is the only European zoological institution to have successfully bred the rare species.

In Jamaica, where the species is found, Rotspiegel Amazons are considered highly endangered. They occur exclusively in two small parts of the island, and the wild population is estimated at no more than 15,000 birds.

Eveline Dungl, head of the zoo’s zoological department, said the species was experiencing rapid population declines caused in part by habitat loss, predation by invasive species and the effects of climate change.

Four Jamaican Amazon chicks are also currently growing up at the zoo. Schönbrunn Zoo said the breeding success should not obscure the fact that illegal wildlife trafficking remains a serious threat to Amazons and many other animals.