Bolivia reserve records best breeding season for Blue-throated Macaws

A row of nest boxes in southern Bolivia just delivered the strongest breeding season yet for one of the rarest parrots on Earth. At the Laney Rickman Blue-throated Macaw Reserve, 19 chicks fledged from the Nido Adoptivo boxes, a single-season record that pushed the project’s total to 164 wild-fledged Blue-throated Macaws.

The numbers tell the story plainly. Reserve staff installed 128 nest boxes for the breeding season, 11 were occupied by Blue-throated Macaws, 32 eggs were laid, 24 hatched, and 19 chicks made it to fledging. That was not just a good run. It was the highest fledgling count recorded in one season since the project began, and it marked the second consecutive year the reserve produced 19 fledglings.

For a species that was once thought to be gone from the wild, every successful nest matters. The Blue-throated Macaw, Ara glaucogularis, is endemic to the Llanos de Moxos in north-central Bolivia and depends on seasonally flooded savannahs and elevated palm islands, habitat that leaves it with very specific nesting needs. The species nearly disappeared after steep declines in the 1970s and 1980s, including the export of an estimated 1,200 or more wild-caught birds in that decade. Conservation estimates now put only about 420 to 480 mature birds in the wild.

That is why the reserve’s nest-box strategy has become so important. Natural cavities are scarce, so the boxes create breeding opportunities where the landscape no longer provides enough safe sites on its own. The first egg in this breeding cycle was laid in December 2024, and the last chick fledged in June 2025, which meant months of monitoring before the full result was known. The payoff showed that targeted management, habitat protection, and steady follow-through can still move the species forward.

The Laney Rickman reserve, created by Asociación Armonía in August 2018, covers 2,421 hectares, or 5,982 acres, about 42 kilometers south of Trinidad. It is Armonía’s second Blue-throated Macaw reserve and protects breeding habitat for the southern subpopulation. The Blue-throated Macaw Nestbox Program itself began in 2005, and this season’s outcome shows it is no longer a one-off success. It is repeatable progress, built one occupied box at a time, for a macaw that still needs every advantage it can get.