Three young, captive-bred individuals were taken to a private reserve<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Before releasing the curassows, the researchers set up a robust scientific protocol for the reintroduction process. The first step was to select a suitable location as a new home for the young animals. A private Atlantic Forest reserve owned by a sugar mill in Rio Largo\u2014its well-preserved forest remnants providing an abundance of food sources for the birds\u2014was selected. The researchers estimate the area has capacity to accommodate up to 20 curassow couples. On average, a pair of curassows\u2014which measure almost 90 centimeters in length and weigh 3 kilograms\u2014occupies around 50 hectares of forest. In 2017, one of the curassow couples was taken to this area and kept at a nursery to test the region\u2019s viability. This helped the team to decide the best timing for the release. Because the mating season in this species is between June and August, biologists chose to release the birds into the wild in September. This would allow the animals almost a year to adapt to the reserve before entering the mating period. The last step was selecting specimens to be transferred to the reserve.<\/p>\n
Age and genetics were the decisive factors in the choice of the three captive-bred couples that would be released in Rio Largo. Because they are descended from a population of just three individuals, all extant curassows are to some degree related. For this reason, the researchers tried to select animals with mutually different, but not rare, genetic profiles. If an individual were unable to adapt to the region or died (as in fact occurred), no genetic lineage would be lost forever. \u201cIt was important to select individuals that were young, were genetically different from each other to the extent possible, had spent little time in captivity, and exhibited good reproductive potential,\u201d notes biologist Mercival Roberto Francisco from UFSCar\u2019s Sorocaba campus, who is heading the genetic leg of the study. \u201cNone of the birds we reintroduced are siblings of each other.\u201d This would, in theory, increase the chances of successful reintroduction in the wild and, above all, of their survival in the reserve. Curassows of the rarest genetic linages would only be released into the reserve when their adaptation to the natural environment was likely to be successful.<\/p>\n
In the early stages of the reintroduction process, it is one of Thiago Dias\u2019s tasks to place water and food\u2014including bird feed and fruit\u2014in an area close to the reserve nursery every two days. If any curassow is having trouble finding food in the forest, it will not be at risk of starvation. \u201cI have to be careful not to come into close contact with the animals,\u201d says Dias. \u201cThey must fear humans, not bond with them.\u201d If everything goes as planned, the researchers will know whether the curassows brought into the reserve have produced offspring in the second half of 2020. In the coming months other birds, such as solitary tinamous, parrots, and guans, will also be released in the reserve area to improve local biodiversity.<\/p>\n
Project<\/strong>
\nAssessment, rehabilitation, and conservation of endangered species at the Pernambuco Endemism Center (n\u00ba 17\/23548-2<\/a>); Grant Mechanism<\/strong> Thematic Project; Principal Investigator<\/strong> Lu\u00eds F\u00e1bio Silveira (USP); Investment<\/strong> R$2,051,344.52.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alagoas curassows are reintroduced into their habitat 40 years after going extinct in the wild ","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":333067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[206,224,266],"coauthors":[101],"class_list":["post-333066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-biodiversity","tag-ecology","tag-zoology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333066"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333071,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333066\/revisions\/333071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333066"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=333066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}