Aratinga Tours cares about the nature around us. We like to use part of our profit to support support local conservation projects.
Since 2007 Aratinga Tours supports “Amigos de la Lapa Verde“, (Friends of the Great Green Macaw) a non-profit organization concerned about the conservation of the Great Green Macaw (Ara Ambigua), one of the most endangered birds of Costa Rica.
A few years ago the Amigos de la Lapa Verde succesfully started a project in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui in which wild almond trees (Dipteryx Panamensis) with an active Great Green Macaw nest are offered in adoption. In return the local landowner signs a contract promising not to cut the tree and to protect the macaws against poachers.
The Great Green Macaw can be found from Honduras untill Ecuador but populations have been reduced significantly in the last years. The bird is listed on the red list of CITES (Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species) and is also identified as a species “most in need of protection” by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation). In Costa Rica the situation of the Great Green Macaw is very critic: in 2007 only around 50 couples remain and the species is now found in less than 10% of its original home range. The last years however their populations have been able to recover.
The greatest threat for the the Great Green Macaw population is the continued deforestation, especially the cutting down of the wild almond tree, a very valuable treespecies because of its high quality wood but at the same time the most important forage and nesting tree for the Great Green Macaw.