The Organizations Racing to Save the World’s Macaws
Seventeen macaw species live across Latin America and the Caribbean. A small, tightly connected community of researchers and conservationists is working — species by species, forest by forest — to keep every one of them flying.
Eight Macaw Species, Eight Very Different Fights
Global Parrot & Macaw Conservation Organizations
These are the groups whose research, breeding protocols, and field experience most directly inform conservation programs worldwide — including the Great Green Macaw effort at Bocas del Toro.
World Parrot Trust
The largest dedicated parrot-conservation charity in the world, funding and running field projects across five continents — including its own Great Green Macaw, Hyacinth Macaw, and Lear’s Macaw programs.
Flagship project: Great Green Macaws: Protecting and Growing Wild Populations (Costa Rica/Nicaragua); Lear’s Macaw Research (Brazil); Hyacinth Macaw Conservation (Pantanal, Brazil).
Visit organization →Macaw Recovery Network
Formerly The Ara Project — the only large-scale captive-breeding and release program for the Great Green Macaw in the region, and the single closest analog for the Bocas del Toro effort.
Flagship project: Breeding and release of Great Green and Scarlet Macaws on Costa Rica’s Caribbean and Pacific slopes; the aviary and nest-box designs used at Dolphin Bay are modeled directly on this program’s protocols.
Visit organization →Loro Parque Fundación
One of the largest funders of parrot conservation on Earth, home to the most complete parrot collection in the world and credited with helping pull nine parrot species back from the brink of extinction.
Flagship project: Major funder of the Blue-throated Macaw recovery effort in Bolivia’s Beni savanna, among dozens of global parrot projects.
Visit organization →Asociación ArmonÃa
BirdLife International’s Bolivian partner, which built and manages the Barba Azul Nature Reserve specifically to protect one of the rarest macaws on the planet.
Flagship project: Blue-throated Macaw Program — habitat protection and nest-site management in the Llanos de Moxos savanna.
Visit organization →ACTP — Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots
Ran the captive-breeding program that made history in 2022 by returning Spix’s Macaw — extinct in the wild since the year 2000 — to Brazil’s Caatinga forest.
Flagship project: Spix’s Macaw reintroduction program, Caatinga Forest Domain, Bahia, Brazil — the only successful full reintroduction of a once extinct-in-the-wild macaw species.
Visit organization →Parrots International
A US-based nonprofit funding grassroots parrot conservation projects around the world, from macaws to cockatoos.
Flagship project: Blue-throated Macaw Project (Bolivia), among a broad global portfolio of parrot-conservation grants.
Visit organization →BirdLife International
A worldwide partnership of conservation organizations spanning more than 100 countries, running the long-running Save Parrots Now campaign for the world’s most threatened parrot species.
Flagship project: Save Parrots Now campaign; supports national partners (including Asociación ArmonÃa) on macaw-specific habitat protection.
Visit organization →The Macaw Society
A research-driven organization running one of the longest continuous studies of wild macaw populations anywhere in the world, at the Tambopata Research Center in the Peruvian Amazon.
Flagship project: Long-term monitoring of Scarlet, Red-and-green, and Blue-and-yellow Macaw populations at natural clay licks — foundational science for macaw conservation worldwide.
Visit organization →See How It All Comes Together in Panamá
The Bocas del Toro Archipelago is now home to one of the newest — and most ambitious — macaw reintroduction efforts in the Americas, drawing directly on the methods pioneered by the organizations above.
Explore the Bocas del Toro Project →