SAVAGE CAPITALISM.

Demand for exotic birds reptiles and monkey threatens their supply.

AS A BLUE FLASH APPEARS ACROSS THE EVENING sky, Antonio Marcal dos Santos comes running through his backyard yelling, "Here he comes."

Dos Santos is one of many peasants who watch over the blue Spix macaw (cyanopsitta spixii), the last of its species to survive in the wild. "It gives me great satisfaction each day to know that he is still alive," says the goatherd at his home near this small northeastern town in Bahia.

The Spix macaw, the world's rarest wild bird, is the most extreme example of the consequences of animal trafficking, a worldwide business that is second only to drugs and arms in illegal commerce. "He is the last of the Mohicans, a symbol of resistance against animal traffickers," says Francisco Neo, coordinator of wildlife and flora for the federal environmental protection agency known as Ibama.

Nobody knows exactly how much traffickers earn from the world's illicit animal trade, but Interpol, an international police group, estimates annual sales at US$5 billion, with Americans ranking as the most frequent customers. "The United States is undoubtedly the world's largest wildlife-consuming country and center of commerce for the world's animals," according to Traffic, the monitoring arm of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).

In Brazil, tropical birds such as the Spix macaw, along with reptiles and small monkeys, bring in as much as $700 million a year from collectors, pet shops and scientific institutions, says the National Network Against Wild Animal Trafficking (known by its Portuguese acronym as Renctas), an independent Rio-based organization. And the rarer the species, the higher the price. The Spix macaw, for example, would sell for as much as $60,000, according to Renctas.

In South America, Brazil, Colombia and Peru are home to animal traffickers' favorite fauna, while Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay typically serve as transit points for Asia, Europe and the United States. Peru, with its varied geography of desert and jungle, is a prime hunting ground for iguanas, crocodiles and anacondas. In recent years, outdoor animal markets selling such exotic animals have been found even in downtown Lima, In Colombia, the second richest after Brazil in biological diversity, poaching has driven several parrot species to the brink of extinction, Leftist guerrillas, however, have recently reduced the trade by banning peasants from hunting wildlife in the Andean territories under their control.

To be sure, deforestation, hunting and poverty have also helped decimate regional wildlife. But most experts agree that the big business of animal trafficking has played a major role in endangering 218 Brazilian species, including 109 birds, 68 mammals, 31 invertebrates, nine reptiles and one amphibian, according to the Belo Horizonte-based Biodiversitas Foundation.

The monkey mafia. Poaching is so prevalent that 30% of the Rio de Janeiro zoos 2,800 animals were acquired as the result of police raids on traffickers, including 900 in July alone, says Marcio Martins, president of the Rio Zoo Foundation.

Dener Giovanini, general coordinator of Renctas, says most Brazilian wildlife is trapped by poor villagers in the impoverished north and brought to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's largest cities, by truckers and bus drivers. Police say endangered animals are then smuggled out at airports or ports or sold at outdoor markets. According to the authorities, there are 100 such markets each week in Rio de Janeiro state alone. "These traffickers are as well organized as the drug and arms mafias," says Giovanini.

In recent months, Brazilian authorities have stepped up their campaign to end animal trafficking by teaming for the first time with the year-old Renctas and federal agency Ibama. "Since many species are near extinction, even politicians are listening to us now," says Elizabeth MacGregor, Brazil representative for the World Society for the Protection of Animals. "And in every Brazilian city, there is some type of organization that protects animals."

Results are becoming apparent. In February 1999, a U.S. naturalized citizen named Manoel Lourenco Gab was arrested in Sao Paulo trying to smuggle to Pennsylvania 24 hyacinth macaw eggs estimated to be worth $10,000 each. Several months later, two more traffickers were arrested trying to smuggle out blue Lear macaws, whose population has dwindled to just 150. Like its cousin the Spix, the Lear can earn a trafficker thousands of dollars on the international market. And in August 1999, authorities confiscated 11 jungle animals from the private zoo of a federal senator named Ludio Coelho, including two non-endangered macaws in poor condition.

Moreover, police raids on outdoor city markets are becoming routine. On a recent Sunday, 30 members of the Rio forestry battalion donned flak jackets, packed rifles, and raided two such markets in the suburban cities of Duque de Caxias and Sao Goncalo, nabbing 174 live wild birds and six turtles crammed into crude wooden cages. Each raid lasted about 15 minutes.

At Duque de Caxias, police fanned out through rows of live birds, chickens, guinea pigs, dogs, parakeets and turtles, looking under benches, parked cars and even in the bathrooms of local bars. At Sao Goncalo, several men ran behind a church as police arrived. No arrests were made at either market. "We have to get in and get out quickly so people don't get upset," says Major Jose Mauricio Padrone, of the Rio Forestry Police Battalion, who led the raids. "Many think the law is foolish."

Traffickers escape cages. Many Brazilians believe banning the collection, transport or sale of any wildlife without proper permits is too strict. Hunting is also outlawed everywhere except in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. Padrone and other law enforcement officials, however, complain that Brazilian judges typically let traffickers of even rare fauna go after paying a small bail. "We bust them and they are out in a few hours or the next day," he says. "It's not a priority for the justice system.

Currently, anti-trafficking groups are pressuring the government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso to beef up enforcement by placing federal agents at every international airport and port, and, in each state, creating centers in which police can house confiscated wildlife. "The government has to devise a concrete program if we are going to win this war," says animal activist Giovanini.

In Curaca, the Blue Macaw Project appears to be an exception to the federal government's policy of neglect. After the discovery of the lone wild Spix--there are others in captivity--in 1990, the government immediately mounted an unprecedented effort to save the bird from extinction. It formed an international commission of official agencies, scientists and private groups to stop traffickers and promote the species' regeneration. The committee includes the Houston Zoo and the World Wildlife Fund.

Many Curaca residents have also joined in as protectors. A large sign on the town's outskirts says, "Welcome to the Home of the Blue Macaw." At the "Little Blue Macaw School" elementary students write poetry about the rare bird and draw his picture. "Leave him alone; he's the last," wrote 15-year-old fourth-grader Geovane Jesus in a recent writing exercise, and Marcal dos Santos spends hours whittling the Spix's image out of wood to sell to the few birdwatchers who visit the area.

"The people here see him as a symbol of their lives in the drought-plagued northeast," says biologist Yara de Melo Barros, the project's field coordinator. "He confronts life's adversities just as they do."

THE LAST WILD THING

THE SPIX MACAW, A TWO-FOOT-LONG BIRD WITH DARK BLUE plumage, gray-blue head and bright yellow eyes, was thought to be extinct in the wild until this male was discovered nine years ago by a Birdlife International expedition. He is believed to be at least 13 years old.

While he is the last in the wild, he is not alone in the world. Currently, there are 44 Spix macaws worldwide that were smuggled out of Brazil by traffickers or born in captivity. There are four in Brazil--two in the Sao Paulo zoo--and 40 others in the Philippines, Switzerland and the Canary Islands.

Spix macaws have always lived in the environs near Curaca, a backlands town of 6,000 inhabitants located along the south bank of the Sao Francisco River. In this denuded landscape, the sole survivor engages in a daily survival routine, foraging for food among cacti, sage and prickly stunted trees known as caatinga. Each day, he flies off at daybreak to a treetop nest to pick up a green Illiger macaw, his female companion of the past eight years. Together, they spend the entire day searching for food, flying an average of 40 kilometers a day.

"When it comes to finding food, he has more patience than any human being I know," says Jorge Souza Rosa, who has monitored the bird's movements by foot, jeep and bicycle since 1991 and considers himself the Spix's "bodyguard."

When the avian couple returns at sunrise, the Spix waits until his mate enters her nest in a caraibeira tree before flying to his bachelor digs inside a cactus bush." He is the perfect husband, both loyal and courteous," says Yara de Melo Barros, field coordinator for the Blue Macaw Project. To date, the Illiger has produced only infertile eggs.

In 1995, biologists tried to mate the Spix with a female Spix that had been raised in captivity. Scientists had to put her through an intensive seven-month boot camp to build up flying stamina and adapt to a new diet of seeds from local trees before releasing her into the wild. And although the female was eventually accepted by the Spix and his Illiger lover as part of a Menage trois, she vanished just seven weeks later.

Her whereabouts remained a mystery until a goatherd recently told Melo Barros that he had witnessed her death, but kept the secret for four years for fear the project would end. The female Spix, he says, had collided with an electricity wire.

Most recently, biologists placed nine Illiger chicks in the nest to see if the Spix and the Illiger would make adequate parents. The couple immediately began feeding the baby macaws and teaching them how to fly and find food. In March, the young Illigers set off on their own and are currently being monitored by radio collars. Melo Barros says the successful experiment proves that the next step is to place Spix chicks in the nest." Even if the last wild Spix dies tomorrow and can no longer teach survival skills to domesticated macaws, the project will continue," she says. "We will use the Illigers he trained as guides."