RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — A blue-plumed parrot believed to be the last of its kind in the wild has disappeared and might have been killed, biologists said.
The researchers said recently that they haven't seen the 19-year-old Spix's macaw for two months, an indication that it might have fallen victim to a hawk's claws or a poacher's trap.
Wildlife biologists in northeastern Brazil for the past 10 years have kept close tabs on the bird, whose breed was pushed to the edge of extinction by poachers supplying the illegal exotic bird trade.
"If he died, it's a terrible situation," said Yara de Melo Barros, field director of the government-backed Spix's Macaw Conservation Project, begun after the species' sole survivor was discovered in 1990.
Though 60 Spix's macaws live in captivity around the world, there is a slim chance any can survive in the wild without the male bird to teach survival skills, she said.
The remaining wild male was to raise six young captive-born Spix's macaw chicks.
Barros said the bird has never before disappeared for more than 15 days from its habitat of scrublands and palm-tree stands near the village of Curaca, 1,300 miles northeast of Rio.
Researchers are looking for the animal, but if it isn't found, the only way to stave off the Spix's macaw's extinction is for a parrot pair of another species to raise the chicks born in captivity, Barros said. But that has never been done successfully with parrots.