Reintroduction of the Golden Conure (Guaruba guarouba) in Northern Brazil: Establishing a Population in a Protected Area
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I would like to thank the authors for submitting a paper on parrot reintroduction, the field is still young and we need published accounts of as many projects as possible. It is good to see that the release has had some early success.
Overall the paper is clear and well written. However, the authors could do a better job of framing their methods and discussion in relation to the previous literature.
Title: The habitats being used are much more “peri-urban” and not really “urban” like what you see with many Naturalized parrots that truly live in cities world-wide. Since there has been much talk about parrots living truly in cities (and not using native habitat) I think it best that the title reflect that you are using natural protected areas that are near cities (not truly urbanized habitats). An example of what I am talking about can be found here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bird-conservation-international/article/abs/history-status-and-productivity-of-the-redcrowned-amazon-amazona-viridigenalis-in-the-lower-rio-grande-valley-of-texas/48FD310A46DA8A4748F6069C004E5B22
L 20. Replace sentence with the following:
Released birds were very successful at finding and consuming native foods, evading predators, and one pair even reproduced successfully.
L 29. I don’t understand the “and subsequent reintroduction of wild populations.” Please clarify.
L 38 to L40. I don't really agree, there have been some good papers written about parrot releases in South America. The first is a classic foundational paper in the field. It also seems a bit of an overstatement. So best to reword.
Sanz V, Grajal A. 1998. Successful reintroduction of captive-raised Yellow-shouldered Amazon Parrots on Margarita Island, Venezuela. Conservation Biology. 12:430-441.
Brightsmith DJ, Hilburn J, Del Campo A, Boyd J, Frisius M, Frisius R, Janik D, Guillén F. 2005. The use of hand-raised Psittacines for reintroduction: a case study of Scarlet Macaws (Ara macao) in Peru and Costa Rica. Biological Conservation. 121:465-472.
L 51. Delete “and necessary”
L 53. Replace “is” with “may be” as you don’t know if it is viable yet or not.
L 61 change to “Here we report the preliminary results of this collaboration.”
L 74 the larger aviary is larger than 5 cubic meters so there is likely an error here. Best if you give all three dimensions of this aviary as well.
L 118. I did not see where you stated how many were released. You said two groups were transported, but then some were killed in captivity, so not sure how many were released.
L 156 – 160. There are a variety of papers that deal with this problem of dispersal away from the release site. You could likely cite a few more to back up the finding across time that fly-offs are a large issue in parrot releases.
L 174. Citations needed. The issue of predation is huge for reintroduced parrots. So worth citing a few papers and stating that it is a big problem for the field. White et al 2012 is a classic paper and should be cited in this and likely elsewhere in the manuscript.
L 178 and 182. Replace “preyed” with “preyed upon.”
L 201 to 208. A number of classic issues from the parrot reintroduction literature are discussed here. It is important that these be better put in to context with the previous literature. I also suggest reading a paper from the special issue of Diversity: https://search.proquest.com/openview/e7f40c43a8c714d76576c8d4ae195bb3/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2032408 It is by Tom White’s group and discusses state of the art in parrot releases.
L 206. This is not the first paper to discuss the importance of supplemental feeding for maintaining cite fidelity (Brightsmith et al 2005)
L 213. I think Dispersion is the wrong word. . .perhaps dispersal?
L 214. Telemetric replace with telemetry.
Author Response
Title: We thank the reviewer for pointing out the current work on properly urban birds. Indeed, the previous title could mislead the reader´s expectations. We believe this change of title to be adequate
L29: The previous phrasing was not clear, so we rewrote it
L 38 to L40: We agree with the reviewer and thank him for pointing out the importance of the two classic papers. We rewrote to highlight the state of most release actions in Brazil and SA.
L51: We agreed to delete this since it is not necessary
L53: We agree that this change is more adequate
L61: We changed the phrase to highlight the collaboration
L74: Indeed, it was a mistake. We changed to the dimensions
L118: We have agreed to add the information on how many individuals were released in total
L156 – 160: We have added a classic example to contrast with the new one and stress that this is a major problem in the field
L174: We chose to focus on the suggested theme of predation being a major issue and cite the work of White et al 2012
L178 to 182: We agree with the reviewer suggestion and reword
L201 to 208: We thank the reviewer for suggesting Tom White´s paper on this matter. We choose not to expand on this discussion given the goal of our communication was to focus on our preliminary results without overexpanding the text. We believe the examples cited here are enough given our scope and space.
L206: We have agreed that the work of Brightsmith 2005 is worth citing here
L213: We agreed that this word is better suited
L214: We agree with telemetry replacing telemetric monitoring
Reviewer 2 Report
Enjoyed reading this paper--well written, and documented. It is descriptive in nature, but the authors indicate that the next releases will be radio-tracked. As they suggest, authors will be able to quantify movement rates and used locations, but also estimate post-release survival. The report presented in this paper is fine as it emphasized the problem, the approach, and preliminary, observational data post-release. It is a very important first step.
Author Response
We thank the reviewer for his positive and constructive comment on our work.
Right now we are working on the improvement of the mentioned detail on movement tracking for the next release groups
Reviewer 3 Report
In their submission, the authors present interesting preliminary results of a pilot project for the reintroduction of Golden Conures, after a very long absence from the target sites. This study is important, not just in terms of the species, but also because it is attempting the restoration of an IUCN-Redlisted species in an urban context. That context is of increasing interest globally. However, small but crucial details are missing, which should be clarified to ensure that the conclusions are supported by the methods and results.
As a short communication, it is tricky to have enough words to describe everything, but a few areas deserve closer attention:
- Monitoring
Regarding the following: "Figure 3. Number of golden conures alive over time (blue) and those that remained near the release 144 site (green); every reduction in the blue line represents a recorded death. Dashed orange lines mark 145 the first and second release, the arrow points to the first breeding in the wild."
- This graph suggests that the fate of every individual was known for the entire time period. If so, that is remarkable and excellent. If not, then the graph should reflect the uncertainty associated with some individuals not being relocated during the whole time period.
- No details are given of how released birds were monitored after release aside from those returning to the release site. Were they transmittered? Were all of them banded and recaptured or resighted in the wild? This is crucial to the assertions made in the Discussion and the overarching conclusions.
- Figure 3 speaks about total number of birds seen. Given that there was reproduction in the wild does this number reflect the newly recruited birds? Clarify that this graph is indeed a reflection of only the released birds.
2. Anti-predator training
- It's excellent that the authors conducted predator training and they expound on it's use, but nothing is mentioned in terms of methodology of how it was done or how responses were measured. Were behavioural responses in anti-predator training considered when picking what individuals to release when?
3. Disease testing
- It's excellent that pre-release disease screening was conducted, but the authors should clarify that the birds were indeed negative to all the tested diseases before release if they were.
4. Release cohorts
- Regarding this: "The groups were composed of mostly young individuals of two to 91 three years old, with an equal proportion of males and females. The first group was sent 92 to Belem in August 2017, consisting of 14 birds, and the second group of 10 individuals 93 was sent in May 2018." Please state for each of the 2 groups exactly how many males and females there were of the different age classes in each group.
5. Factors of decline
- The authors mention threats to the birds generally in the introduction. Please make a comment on whether there are any available data about the status of these threats in/around the release area and how these have been mitigated if possible.
Author Response
Monitoring
We agree that these details about the uncertainty of individuals being alive should be better explained in the figure description.
Regarding the monitoring methods, we thank for pointing out the importance of further details on how the monitoring was conducted. We believe this new explanation should be adequate in this type of communication.
We chose to point out that the arrow represents the recruited individual being added to the population, so it becomes clear that it is a representation of not only the released individuals
Anti-predator training
We agree to explain further how we conducted the predator training without overly expanding the text.
Disease testing
We thank the reviewer for pointing out the importance of confirming the negative results. We have included this detail.
Release cohorts
We chose to make a brief description of the age classes to keep the text clean and to focus attention on the events of the reintroduction experience so we judged that a complete list of the age and sex of each individual would stray away from the scope of this paper
Factors of decline
The main factor of decline is explained to be controlled here. We have added another line to reinforce this detail. As requested, more details regarding the area can be found in the Park´s management plan, listed on the References: http://ideflorbio.pa.gov.br/utinga/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/PMUtinga_26out2013.pdf (Acessed on 23/12/2020).
