‘A dream come true’: Brazil’s blue-and-yellow macaws return to Rio after 200 years

An ambitious ‘refaunation’ project is bringing the much-loved birds and other lost species back to the city’s national park Images of the iconic blue-and-yellow macaw can be spotted all over Rio de Janeiro. Yet the real thing has been seen so rarely in the Brazilian city that some wondered if it ever really existed there at all. The French explorer Jean de Léry first described an abundance of the giant, colourful parrots around Indigenous tribes in the 16th century, and the Austrian naturalis...

By Luke Taylor