The Macaw Project: Bringing the Great Green Macaw Back to Bocas del Toro
Born out of a pandemic lockdown in 2020, The Panama Project’s Macaw Project is a 10-year mission to restore the almendro forests of the Bocas del Toro Archipelago and reintroduce the Critically Endangered Great Green Macaw to skies it hasn’t filled in generations.
A Mission Interrupted, Then Reinvented
In early 2020, Steve Bender — President of the Rotary Club of Newport Beach and CEO of Ayuda International — was in Panamá preparing for a routine humanitarian mission: leading volunteer dentists and dental students from USC to deliver free dental care to underserved communities. As was his custom, Steve flew out two days ahead of his team to set up equipment and coordinate logistics.
Then the world shut down. When LAX closed to global travel, Steve’s team was stranded in California — and Steve himself was stranded on Isla Colón, in the Bocas del Toro Archipelago, cut off from his team, from air travel, and from the rhythm of his humanitarian work.
What began as a helpless pause became something else entirely. With borders closed and outer-island communities — seniors, Ngäbe-Buglé Indigenous families, small fishing villages — suddenly without reliable food, fuel, or medicine, Steve began running emergency supply deliveries by small boat, drawing on his Rotary training and logistics experience.
The Back-Haul: Medicine and Food Out, Trees In
Delivering Medicine Out, Bringing Trees Back
Throughout the COVID-19 lockdown, Steve Bender ran supply boats to the outer islands of Bocas del Toro — delivering medicine to seniors and staple foods and fuel to Ngäbe-Buglé Indigenous communities cut off from the mainland. On the return trip, rather than running the boat back empty, he began back-hauling mountain almendro saplings, delivering trees to planting sites across the archipelago.
A visit to a Great Green Macaw rescue center in Costa Rica had introduced Steve to the crisis facing the species: the near-total loss of the mountain almendro (Dipteryx panamensis) — sometimes called the “Tree of Life” for the thousands of species it supports — was driving the Great Green Macaw toward local extinction in Panamá. Over roughly 18 months spanning 2020 and 2021, that back-haul routine planted the earliest cohort of trees the Macaw Project now depends on — more than 5,000 almendro saplings in the first year alone, growing to over 12,000 trees archipelago-wide by 2024.
Almendro trees take years to mature. The trees planted during this window are expected to begin fruiting around 2028 — finally producing the seeds and nesting cavities a reintroduced macaw population will need — in support of a targeted first reintroduction in 2030.
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”
No Almendro, No Macaw
The Great Green Macaw’s fate is bound to a single tree species. The mountain almendro is the almost-exclusive source of nesting cavities the species uses in the wild, and its rich, oily seeds are a keystone food supporting thousands of other species too. Where the almendro forest disappears, the macaw disappears with it — which is why a macaw recovery program has to start as a tree-planting program.
Almendro: Tree of Life and the Great Green Macaw
This film tells the story of the mountain almendro — the “tree of life” of the Central American rainforest canopy — and the giant green parrot whose survival depends entirely on it. It’s the clearest explanation of why the Macaw Project starts with trees, not birds.
Video: “Almendro Tree of Life and Great Green Macaw” — embedded from YouTube.
Program Timeline
Steve Bender is stranded on Isla Colón, Bocas del Toro, when global COVID-19 travel restrictions hit. He begins running emergency supply boats to outer-island communities cut off from the mainland.
On return trips from delivering medicine, food, and fuel to Indigenous and senior communities, Steve back-hauls mountain almendro saplings — over 18 months, planting the earliest trees the Macaw Project depends on.
What started as 5,000+ saplings in year one grows into an archipelago-wide reforestation effort, in partnership with the Bocas Rainforest Reforestation Initiative (BRRI) and the Institute for Tropical Ecology and Conservation (ITEC).
Concept design work begins on the region’s first dedicated Great Green Macaw breeding aviary at Dolphin Bay, alongside a planned clinic and storage hub to support ongoing mission work. See the full aviary design plan →
The earliest almendro trees planted in 2020–2021 are projected to reach fruiting maturity, and the first captive-bred macaws are expected to be ready for pre-release conditioning.
The 10-year goal: the first Great Green Macaws released into a Bocas del Toro habitat capable of sustaining them — full circle from the first sapling back-hauled in 2020.
The Panama Project & the 7 Seas Initiative
The Macaw Project is one program within The Panama Project, the flagship initiative of the 7 Seas Initiative — a “living laboratory” in Bocas del Toro, Panamá, born from Steve Bender’s pandemic-era supply runs and grown into a model of integrated, community-driven conservation. Beyond the Macaw Project, The Panama Project now runs Rotary Reefs (community coral nurseries and a lionfish-harvest program), Bocas Bounty (a community fruit-and-seedling exchange), the Oral Hygiene Initiative (dental care and education for island children), and The Phoenix Project (a purpose-built humanitarian catamaran for healthcare, water, and disaster relief).
The project is guided by the Rotary Club of Newport Beach’s 4-7-8-17 framework — Rotary’s Four-Way Test, Seven Areas of Focus, the Eight Pillars of Positive Peace, and the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals — and works in partnership with the Rotary Club of Bocas del Toro, Ayuda International, USC, Floating Doctors, ITEC, Panamá’s Ministry of Environment (MiAmbiente), and Tropical Arts Resort on Isla Careneros, among many other local partners.
Visit The Panama Project → | Download the full booklet (PDF) →
The Dolphin Bay Breeding Aviary
A colony breeding facility for at least 8 pairs of Great Green Macaws — designed for Dolphin Bay’s tropical, high-rainfall, seismically active coastal environment, and modeled on the only comparable breeding program in the region.
View the Full Aviary Design Plan →