By Loreto Rojas, Diario Uach.-Losses in corn, oats and wheat crops have been reported by farmers in the center-south of our country for some years. One of the causes indicated by the farmers: the choroy parrot (Enicognathus leptorhynchus) and cachaña (Enicognathus ferrugineus), both native species of Chile that feed on these crops, generating economic losses for the sector.
This problem is being addressed by the doctoral thesis of Javier Godoy, Natural Resources Conservation Engineer from the Faculty of Forest Sciences and Natural Resources of the Austral University of Chile, who is interested not only in promoting management for the production of these crops , but also in making agricultural production compatible with the conservation of the populations of these wild birds.
For this, the PhD student in Forest Ecosystems and Natural Resources taught by this Faculty has been working on an interdisciplinary proposal since October 2022 with 30 farmers from the Los Ríos Region dedicated to planting corn, with the idea of obtaining a diagnosis that Please help us understand the magnitude of this problem.
Javier Godoy-Güinao, PhD student in Forest Ecosystems and Natural Resources.
“My thesis is divided into three main lines, which dialogue with each other: one is related to ornithology, where we study the presence of parrots in crops, their relative abundances throughout the phenology of maize, the intensities of use , that is to say, the time that these birds spend in the sowings, at what times their presence is concentrated, etc».
“Secondly, we are evaluating the damage that parrots generate in agricultural crops, in order to know its frequency and severity, and find out, for example, if the presence of parrots increases, the damage also increases,” he explained.
«The third objective is focused on the human dimension and will delve into the farmers’ perceptions of this situation, revealing the strategies they use to mitigate the damage and analyzing the main factors of human origin and/or biological that determine this strategy. For this, the information of each objective will be integrated, relating the perceptions of damage, with the damage observed in the field, with the presence and intensity of use that parrots make in the crops, and this linking it with the strategies that farmers use to reduce the losses”.
“Some appearances in the press have reported on measures linked to the lethal control of parrots in order to protect crops. Therefore, although this is a management problem for farmers, it could also become a conservation problem”, added Godoy.
For the study of the presence of parrots in crops, the professional has incorporated a bioacoustic component, since it has 30 pieces of equipment that permanently record the vocalizations of birds in the crop fields. “These pieces of equipment are units that are used to sample a wide variety of species, such as birds, amphibians or bats, autonomously recording the sound they emit for long periods of time. This way we can know how long the parrots were in the crops, at what time and if the crops where they spent more time have greater damage”, he explained.
Has the parrot population increased?
Farmers’ reports of damage caused by these birds appear to have increased in recent years. Our perception also tells us that for some time now we have been observing flocks of parrots more frequently, and even larger flocks. However, Javier Godoy states that the population trends of both species are considered stable according to Birdlife International, although their population sizes have not been quantified. In the same way, damage events are becoming more and more frequent and the information generated by this investigation will be very valuable to establish strategies in the future.
“We are in the diagnostic phase, since without knowing how much farmers lose, it is difficult to propose strategies, which may not be cost/effective, and may be more expensive than the losses. Hence the importance of this initial diagnostic phase”, emphasized the Natural Resources Conservation Engineer.
The researcher added that “the conflicts that derive from the interaction between fauna and people are widespread worldwide. Occurs with carnivores and large herbivores mostly. It has been less addressed with birds, but they are recurrent at a global level”.
It is worth mentioning that 15 of the acoustic equipment that are in operation today for this research were awarded by Javier Godoy through a competitive fund from the American company WildLife Acoustics Inc. To this are added another 15 obtained through a FONDECYT project of Professor sponsor of his thesis, Dr. Eduardo Silva.
Additionally, they will have six extra teams that will come from the IDEAWILD fund, which was also awarded to the student.
The choroy and cachaña parrot species, both native, feed on corn, oats and wheat crops.
