NEW DELHI/BRASILIA: This is a story about a bird and a family. But this is no ordinary bird, and this is no ordinary family.
Spix’s macaw, a vivid-blue parrot with elaborate mating rituals, was declared extinct in the wild in 2019. A captive-breeding program has since seen some of the birds reintroduced to their native habitat in Brazil.
For more than two years, officials on three continents have been agitating over why 26 of the creatures ended up at a private zoo in India run by the philanthropic arm of a conglomerate controlled by Asia’s richest family, the Ambanis. Indian investigators cleared the sanctuary of any wrongdoing this week. But European officials say they are keeping a close watch on any exports to Vantara, while Brazil, Germany and India are working toward a possible resolution at a United Nations-administered body that monitors wildlife trade. The 3,500-acre Vantara animal rescue and rehabilitation center in Gujarat state says it is home to some 2,000 species. The venue featured in pre-wedding celebrations last year for the center’s leader Anant Ambani, the youngest son of billionaire Mukesh Ambani, whose guests included Ivanka Trump and Mark Zuckerberg.
The zoo, adjacent to an oil refinery operated by the Ambanis’ Reliance Industries, was inaugurated in March by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
A Reuters analysis of 2,500 commercially available customs records shows that since 2022, the wildlife center has imported an extraordinary range of exotic species from countries including South Africa, Venezuela, Democratic Republic of Congo and the UAE.
The haul resembles a modern-day Noah’s Ark: 2,896 snakes, 1,431 tortoises, 219 tigers, 149 cheetahs, 105 giraffes, 62 chimpanzees, 20 rhinoceroses and scores of reptiles, including spiny-tailed lizards and veiled chameleons.
The shipments were recorded with a declared value of $9 million, which a Vantara spokesperson said reflected freight and insurance charges, not payments for wildlife.
“They are not commercial transactions in animals,” the spokesperson said. “There has never been any commercial consideration paid for any animal transferred to Vantara.” In August, India’s Supreme Court ordered investigators to examine whether Vantara’s acquisitions and treatment of animals complied with Indian laws and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The court this week said investigators found no illegality.
This parrot isn’t dead, it’s in India
The biggest bone of contention has revolved around the Spix’s macaws that the park sourced in 2023 from the Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots (ACTP), a Germany-based non-profit that had partnered with Brazilian authorities to breed the birds, according to customs records, Brazilian officials and CITES documents.
The macaws’ journey is detailed in a customs bill of entry seen by Reuters. It shows the birds were flown to Ahmedabad from Berlin on February 4, 2023, with costs, insurance and freight amounting to $969 per macaw, for a total of $25,194. Customs taxes and local duties of $19,000 were waived in line with Indian practice.
Brazil says it didn’t consent to the parrots’ passage to India, and has raised its concerns at CITES meetings.
“The Vantara zoo has not yet joined the Spix’s Macaw Population Management Program, which is a fundamental condition for the official involvement of this institution in the species conservation effort,” the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, a Brazilian government agency, said by email on September 8.
“At the moment, no Indian institutions are participating in the program, so there is no reason for Spix’s macaws to be sent to India.”
Brazil ended its agreement with ACTP last year, saying the group had sent Spix’s macaws to other countries in “commercial transactions” without Brazilian consent. The nonprofit has previously denied that the parrots’ transfer was commercial in nature; it didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Vantara spokesperson said the macaws’ transfer was “entirely lawful, non-commercial, and undertaken as a conservation breeding arrangement with ACTP.”
India’s Central Zoo Authority didn’t respond to queries.
Germany’s federal environment ministry said it had cleared the 2023 transfer of macaws to Vantara in “good faith,” but didn’t consult Brazil at the time.
Last year, after consulting with Brazilian authorities, Germany rejected an application for a further transfer of Spix’s macaws to Vantara on the grounds that the zoo was “not a participant” in the species’ population management program, a ministry spokesperson said.
“This decision is currently subject to legal proceedings,” the spokesperson added, declining to elaborate.
Popcorn for elephants
In the year ended March 2024, only 20 percent of the 6,355 animals that reached Vantara came from India, the center’s annual report shows. Overall, it has imported species from 40 countries.
Vantara developed from barren land in 2020 to an area of manicured lawns and jungle-like greenery, satellite imagery provided by Maxar Technologies shows.
In media tours, Anant Ambani has showcased kitchens stocked with premium products used to prepare fresh juices, sweets, and even popcorn as treats for elephants.
When Modi visited Vantara this year, his office released an eight-minute video of him feeding lion cubs, elephants, rhinos and giraffes. One picture showed a Spix’s macaw perched on a prime ministerial hand.
India’s government defended Vantara at CITES meetings in Geneva in February, saying the facility is a “recognized center for conservation breeding,” according to a summary published by CITES.
CITES documents published ahead of its next meeting in November show progress in resolving the inquisition. The CITES Secretariat said there had been consultations involving Brazil, India and Germany, and that Brazilian officials would provide an update.
Still, European officials recently indicated they are keeping an eagle eye on any applications to ship wildlife to Vantara.
In an August 1 response to a lawmaker’s concerns about wildlife trade, European Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall said EU states “will pay particular attention to any export requests directed toward India and the facility in question” and assess them with “increased scrutiny.” Roswall’s action hasn’t been previously reported.
Judges in New Delhi this week released a summary of the Indian investigators’ report.
Among the findings: The export-import permits for Spix’s macaws were in order, and Vantara was now holding direct talks with Brazil about “rewilding.”
“Their deliberations are at a preliminary stage,” it said.
Feathers fly in dispute over Ambani zoo’s pursuit of rare parrot
https://arab.news/4w5v5
Feathers fly in dispute over Ambani zoo’s pursuit of rare parrot
- Vantara has imported animals from many nations; denies commercial payments
- Brazil has raised concerns about transfer of Spix’s macaws to India
Three-year heatwave bleached half the planet’s coral reefs: study
PARIS: A study published on Tuesday showed that more than half of the world’s coral reefs were bleached between 2014-2017 — a record-setting episode now being eclipsed by another series of devastating heatwaves.
The analysis concluded that 51 percent of the world’s reefs endured moderate or worse bleaching while 15 percent experienced significant mortality over the three-year period known as the “Third Global Bleaching Event.”
It was “by far the most severe and widespread coral bleaching event on record,” said Sean Connolly, one the study’s authors and a senior scientist at the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
“And yet, reefs are currently experiencing an even more severe Fourth Event, which started in early 2023,” Connolly said in a statement.
When the sea overheats, corals eject the microscopic algae that provides their distinct color and food source.
Unless ocean temperatures return to more tolerable levels, bleached corals are unable to recover and eventually die of starvation.
“Our findings demonstrate that the impacts of ocean warming on coral reefs are accelerating, with the near certainty that ongoing warming will cause large-scale, possibly irreversible, degradation of these essential ecosystems,” said the study in the journal Nature Communications.
An international team of scientists analyzed data from more than 15,000 in-water and aerial surveys of reefs around the world over the 2014-2017 period.
They combined the data with satellite-based heat stress measurements and used statistical models to estimate how much bleaching occurred around the world.
No time to recover
The two previous global bleaching events, in 1998 and 2010, had lasted one year.
“2014-17 was the first record of a global coral bleaching event lasting much beyond a single year,” the study said.
“Ocean warming is increasing the frequency, extent, and severity of tropical-coral bleaching and mortality.”
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, for instance, saw peak heat stress increase each year between 2014 and 2017.
“We are seeing that reefs don’t have time to recover properly before the next bleaching event occurs,” said Scott Heron, professor of physics at James Cook University in Australia.
A major scientific report last year warned that the world’s tropical coral reefs have likely reached a “tipping point” — a shift that could trigger massive and often permanent changes in the natural world.
The global scientific consensus is that most coral reefs would perish at warming of 1.5C above preindustrial levels — the ambitious, long-term limit countries agreed to pursue under the 2015 Paris climate accord.
Global temperatures exceeded 1.5C on average between 2023-2025, the European Union’s climate monitoring service, Copernicus, said last month.
“We are only just beginning to analyze bleaching and mortality observations from the current bleaching event,” Connolly told AFP.
“However the overall level of heat stress was extraordinarily high, especially in 2023-2024, comparable to or higher than what was observed in 2014-2017, at least in some regions,” he said.
He said the Pacific coastline of Panama experienced “dramatically worse heat stress than they had ever experienced before, and we observed considerable coral mortality.”
