Parrots of the Amazona genus are among the most trafficked birds in Colombia. With their distinctive feathers, these parrots are relatively easy to identify by authorities after they have been rescued. But “determining their home territory is a much more complex task that cannot be carried out relying on just the naked eye,” says Luis Alejandro Arias, a biologist at the National University of Colombia. Different populations of each species sometimes live in various parts of the country. Learning the origin of the rescued and rehabilitated birds is necessary to reintroduce them back into the wild. “Although the law demands that environmental authorities release the animals as close to their origin as possible, it isn’t easy to do so at the technical level,” Arias says. To address this problem, a group of Colombian scientists led by Arias established a genetic database by studying rescued birds of the Amazona genus that had a documented origin. In their study published in the journal Bird Conservation International, the researchers analyzed the birds’ genetics and compared them with their database. This helped them to determine the most likely origin of 156 illegally-traded parrots that had been seized near Bogotá. A seized yellow-crowned Amazon (Amazona ochrocephala) that was part of this study. Image by Luis Alejandro Arias. Technological advances are changing the field of conservation. “As new molecular tools are created, like this one just published, we can go a step beyond,” says Carlos del Valle-Useche, co-author of the study and a biologist with the…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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