2017 - Newsletter

Red- Bellied Macaws (Ara manilata)
In August 2017, the PaP Wildfowl Trust Team became aware of a sound not
usually heard, made by the avian residents of the Trust. Upon further
investigation we all spied a pair of Red-Bellied Macaws, and we realized that the
pair had come to make a home in the Moriche palms that grow at the Trust. It
was soon after that, that we noted the pair was actually a family of four!
An intrinsic part of the avian fauna of the Nariva Wetlands includes the
endangered Blue & Gold Macaws (Ara ararauna). This species, bred at the Trust
has been re-introduced into the Nariva Wetlands. The population of Red-Bellied
Macaws(Ara manilata) has diminished severely over recent years.
The struggle by the PaP Wildfowl Trust to save the viability and the ecosystem
services of this valuable coastal wetland together with the community of smallscale
rice-farmers, fishermen and farmers included the need to conserve the high
species diversity there. The Forest Act of the Government of T & T declared the
Nariva Wetlands as a Protected Area in 1968. Further as a result of the
persistent lobbying of the P-a-P Wildfowl Trust, the Nariva Wetlands was made
our first RAMSAR site in 1993 and an Environmentally Sensitive Area in
2006 under the EMA Act.