Hope Valley parrot sanctuary rebuilds after fire, plans 400-bird facility

A fire that killed nearly 100 birds at Foster Parrots in Hope Valley on April 1, 2021, is now giving way to a rebuild that will change the scale of parrot rescue in Rhode Island. The sanctuary is under construction on a new facility of about 28,000 to 29,000 square feet, built by Warwick-based Bentley Builders, and designed to house about 400 exotic birds, mostly parrots.

For Foster Parrots Ltd., also known as The New England Exotic Wildlife Sanctuary, the project marks a sharp turn from damage to recovery. Founded in 1989, the nonprofit describes itself as the largest avian rescue organization in the Northeast United States, and its leaders say the need keeps growing. The sanctuary says it receives more than 1,000 placement requests a year from people looking for somewhere to send unwanted parrots, while its adoptable-birds page logs one to three surrender requests every day.

That demand helps explain why the rebuild has become a $9 million expansion rather than a simple replacement. By July 2025, sanctuary leaders said they had raised about $6 million for engineering and buildout, including a $1.8 million bequest from Bob Barker. Executives have called the project a “living memorial” to the birds lost in the fire, a response that ties the sanctuary’s future directly to the loss that reshaped it.

The fire left Foster Parrots operating in a damaged space for years, but some birds survived, including a scarlet macaw named Rose. The new building is expected to roughly double the space available to staff, volunteers and birds, giving the organization room to take in more displaced parrots and provide more stable care for animals that can live about 80 years.

Foster Parrots has also framed the rebuild as part of a broader animal-welfare gap, saying parrots often “fall between the cracks” because the public tends to connect more easily with mammals. Alongside rescue and foster care, the organization emphasizes education, conservation and partnerships with groups including the Jane Goodall Institute, Born Free USA and World Animal Protection. From the ashes of the 2021 fire, the sanctuary is building back not just bigger, but with enough capacity to absorb the rescues that keep coming.