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There is no doubt that Cape Parrots are critically endangered today due to over 300 years of intensive logging for saw timber in our yellowwood forests.  In a letter written to Prof Mike Perrin, the Chairman of the CPWG, John E Cobby, the Regional Director of Forestry (Eastern Cape) between 1974 and 1985, admitted that “our indigenous forest management practices did not favour the (Cape) parrots”.  As an avid Cape Parrot enthusiast, John lamented that “in hindsight, it is a pity that the dependence on the (yellowwood) trees was not forcefully impressed upon the forest management authorities”. The public was also in the dark, as he reported that only once was an objection raised to felling yellowwood trees in the Qacu forest.  Until recently, the removal of dead and dying yellowwood trees by local Xhosa pit-sawyers was official policy.  This was done with the best intentions, as the authorities hoped to create space on the forest floor for the emergence of the next generation of yellowwoods.  This practice, in fact, systematically removed almost all yellowwood snags utilized by Cape Parrots for nesting.  Most patches of primary forest remaining in South Africa are legislatively or contractually protected from any further logging, and it is hoped that over the next 100 years we will see drastic improvements in the condition and extent of Afromontane mixed Podocarpus mistbelt forests in South Africa.

Despite continued selective logging of yellowwood trees today, habitat loss is no longer a significant threat to wild Cape Parrot populations, just an important lesson we mustn’t forget, for the sake of future generations.  The rapid expansion of the forestry industry in South Africa over the last 60 years has been primarily to the detriment of our indigenous grasslands, but has resulted in a reduced reliance on our indigenous forests for forest products (eg saw timber, firewood and wood pulp).  Forestry companies, such as Sappi and Mondi, have both contributed significantly to forest conservation and the upliftment of associated communities.  Let’s hope these partnerships and initiatives persist well into the future to support the conservation of our indigenous forests and their specialized inhabitants, such as Cape Parrots and numerous endemic amphibians.

Yellowwood trees form the backbone of our Afromontane mixed Podocarpus mistbelt forests, and planting of all four Podocarpus species – and as many other tree species indigenous to these forests on a landscape scale – is now a conservation priority if future generations are going to appreciate these forests as they were and currently are.  This is not to say that planting individual trees in private gardens within the distributional range of Cape Parrots doesn’t make a significant difference, as more and more we are seeing Cape Parrots turn to these “garden sanctuaries” when food resources become seasonally depleted in their natural habitat.

Food Supply
In recent years, sightings of Cape Parrots in fruit orchards, residential gardens, homesteads, commercial centres and cities have increased significantly.  In the Eastern Cape, large flocks of Cape Parrots have been reported feeding on pecan trees in Alice, King William’s Town, Stutterheim and Keiskammahoek.  They have also been reported in gardens in Creighton, Boston, Bulwer and Port St. Johns, when previously daily sightings of large flocks flying between indigenous forest patches were more commonplace. Why is this happening?  Is this a warning sign?

To fully understand the situation in which the Cape Parrot currently finds itself, you need to appreciate the energetic requirements of their daily lives, the daily life of a free-living parrot.

Poicephalus actually means “of the head”, speaking of the strikingly large beak and head of all Poicephalus parrots.  These powerful beaks facilitate unrestricted access to most seeds inside hard fruits and pods, while their short wings are specifically evolved for agile maneuvering in the forest canopy while feeding and evading predators.  Although integral to their daily lives, these characteristics are not suited to long distance flight, elevating their energetic costs to as much as 25 times that of a swallow.

Cape Parrots have, however, been reported to undertake feeding forays between mistbelt and coastal forests in the Eastern Cape of over 100km each way.  Daily local movements are likely more commonplace – understanding how Cape Parrots utilize the available landscape mosaic is a primary focus of the new Hogsback Cape Parrot Project.

These long distance feeding forays are unlikely to be the product of seasonal wandering due to low food availability during winter in the higher-lying areas, but rather a learned behaviour from the established routine of older parrots.  Parrots are characteristically adaptable and constantly inspect new food resources, so as to track their fruiting phenology and accommodate changes in the environment and landscape.

If these changes in the landscape mosaic are too rapid (eg poor land management or rapid climate change), resource tracking predispersal seed predators, with high energy requirements that are dependent on forest resources spread over a large area – such as Cape Parrots and most globally endangered forest specialists – will likely begin to lose body condition, stop breeding, and experience rapid and then gradual population decline.

The decimation of our Afromontane mixed Podocarpus mistbelt forests over the last three hundred years has, most probably, tipped the balance towards an energy deficit for most remaining Cape Parrot populations, whereby individuals are unable to locate sufficient natural food to improve their body condition, much less to muster the energy or bodily resources for a breeding attempt.

So, yes, this is probably a sign that indigenous forests are falling short of sustaining our remaining Cape Parrots.  Right now, we are witnessing a species struggling to avoid extinction, by changes in its feeding behaviour and local movements, in an attempt to discover a new way of life that can sustain breeding and thus population growth.  The population bottleneck monitored over the last 10 to 15 years by Prof Colleen Downs demonstrates that they have been unable to achieve this.  These are risky times for a species with less than 1500 individuals remaining in the wild, and therefore Cape Parrots need our full support in mitigating any extinction threats (eg disease and wild-caught bird trade) that may compound their current situation.

Primary Threats
One threat linked to habitat quality is climate change, whereby projected changes in rainfall patterns in southern African may further undermine our last-remaining Afromontane mixed Podocarpus mistbelt forests, with catastrophic repercussions for Cape Parrot populations, if these changes occur too quickly.  The potential impact of climate change on these forests will, I am sure, become more apparent in the coming years, thus allowing us to design a suitable conservation strategy.

Cape Parrots have the ability to aggregate into large flocks of up to 80 parrots when feeding on localized food resources (eg fruit orchards or a really good patch of yellowwoods), thus giving the impression that they are abundant in that specific area, when in fact you are looking at almost 10% of the global population.  Cape Parrots have thus, historically, been persecuted as crop pests, primarily for damage to apple and pecan orchards in the Eastern Cape.

In the early 1980s, two brothers on a small farm close to Pirie forest in the Eastern Cape were actually paid annual compensation for damages by Cape Parrots to their pecan nut orchards, on condition that they stopped shooting them en masse.  Even though we have seen a marked increase in reports of Cape Parrots feeding in suburban gardens, orchards and botanical gardens, damage has been insignificant, and persecution as a crop pest should no longer be considered an important threat.

So, right now, the last 1000-odd Cape Parrots remaining in the wild are faced by two primary threats that we need to monitor and mitigate, including live capture for the illegal wild-caught bird trade and avian diseases (eg Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease (PBFD).

Live capture for the pet trade and the subsequent illegal wild-caught bird trade has played a significant role in the descent of the species towards possible extinction.  Cape Parrots were first reported as “cage birds” in South Africa around 1897, by which time most of the yellowwood forest had been depleted, and for the next 75 years were a popular pet in households within their distributional range.  One writer at the turn of the 20th century remarked that “(Cape Parrots) do not take kindly to confinement; out of the several which, to my knowledge, have been caged in this neighborhood, not one seems to have survived more than a few weeks”.

Over subsequent decades, hundreds, if not thousands, of Cape Parrots were captured for the pet trade in South Africa, culminating in a flourishing trade in wild Cape Parrots around 50 years ago. According to one witness, school children near Umtata in the Transkei used caged Cape Parrots to call down wild Capes flying overhead into fishing nets – these parrots were subsequently sold for £1 each.  In 1962, another record documented that 23 wild Cape Parrots were sold for R19.00 per bird by one trapper.  At that time, in the north-eastern Transkei, ladders were permanently in trees known to have Cape Parrot nests, so that chicks could be poached annually.

Since 1974, anyone in possession of a Cape Parrot must obtain an aviary license and permit from the local District Conservation Officer, and movement between provinces requires the relevant import and export permits.  Despite protection under these licenses and permits, other provincial ordinances, and national legislation (eg the Biodiversity Act (Act 10: 2004)), there continue to be reports of illegal trade in the species.

The IUCN/PAAZAB Cape Parrot Studbook provides our best up-to-date overview of all Cape Parrots kept in captivity, monitoring all trade, movement, lending schemes, births and deaths.  Maintaining the studbook often involves investigating the histories of Cape Parrots of unknown origin, linking these birds to others who have disappeared from one location and reappeared in another.