Dr David Waugh, Director, Loro Parque Fundación, explains how the conflict between parrots and agriculture is a growing, unstudied threat to conservation throughout the Caribbean

On the island of Dominica, the two endemic globally threatened parrots, the Imperial Parrot (Amazona imperialis) and Red-necked Parrot (Amazona arausiaca), are an important cause of crop losses for farmers of citrus fruit. Here, conflict between these threatened parrots and citrus farmers is a potentially serious obstacle to advancing the gains made over the last three decades in Dominica’s parrot conservation programmes. While the state of conflict is considered serious, the current situation on Dominica is one of complete absence of empirical data on either the extent or severity of the, real or perceived, economic losses experienced by farmers due to parrots, or the degree to which the resulting conflict has produced a backlash against parrot conservation. What are the causes of citrus fruit loss and what is role of parrots in these losses? What is the geographic distribution of the conflict, and are there are environmental variables that can predict where parrot frugivory occurs? How do these crop losses influence the wider avian community?

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