A.F.A. Visits ... Texas A & M/E. B.R.A.

Abstract

You have always loved the wild birds around your rural Texas home but you have never considered keeping even a pet budgie in the house. What would you do with it? Then one pleasant evening a truck backs into the yard and dumps off a bunch of boxes containing 126 huge, hungry, screaming, biting macaws. They are yours to care for. You have no cages, no food, no crocks, no experience, no help-just 126 huge macaws. My God' What to do?

Yes folks, this is a horror story - indeed, a true one that took place in April of 1983. Let me explain.

Several years before, in this same rural Texas home, two old men sat around the fire chatting. Inevitably their talk turned to birds and they found they had some things in common. Mr. G.T. McAlpin, a wealthy Texas oilman and developer, had spent years in South America where he learned to respect, even to love the beautiful macaws he watched in the wild. And Dr. C.D. Brown, a veterinarian and professor at nearby Texas A&M's College of Veterinary Medicine, was equally enthralled by the great exotic birds and he particularly lamented the lack of knowledge regarding health care for exotic birds.

The two old men fed one another's dreams and from their discussions three things became clear. First, that the current conservation practices in most of South America were totally inadequate and invited declines of macaw populations. Second, that not enough was known about wild macaw populations for any one to effectively manage the wild birds on a sustaining yield basis. Third, that the demand for wild-caught birds ought to be considerably reduced

 

by captive-rearing programs and by better husbandry and health care of birds already in captivity.

With these points in mind McAlpin and Brown set out to do something positive. I won't touch on the innumerable meetings, the dozens of legal documents, the agreements, discussions, deals and handshakes that took place but the end result was a liaison between private industry and academia.

McAlpin formed a company, Exotic Bird Research Associates, Inc. (EBRA) which formed some agreements with Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine (TAMU). TAMU worked out some arrangements with a university in Bolivia, G.R. Moreno University (GR.MU). In short, EBRA would fund the project, GRMU would oversee the field work and shipping of the wild macaws, and TAMU would be responsible for health and husbandry studies once the birds arrived in the States. The birds were to remain the property of EBRA but be completely accessible to TAMU. For the sake of brevity I'll call this liaison the Macaw Project.

It was at this point when jeeps and boats were bought, men were hired, permits requested, and money actually began to change hands that McAlpin and Brown ran into a heap of totally unexpected trouble. They were just not ready for the bird industry's fast lane. They trusted people who were dishonest. They depended upon people who failed. They spent money and got nothing. They were misrepresented by someoftheirownpeople. To make matters worse, several world respected organizations were a little hasty with erroneous information and unkind, un-

 

true rumors were floated about. The Macaw Project that had begun as an idealistic dream was being looked upon as though it were a con man's racket.

In truth the Macaw Project was ripped off, cheated, misrepresented, and maligned time and again. Dr. Brown's untimely death in December 1982 was another tragic misfortune. Several more hammerblows in quick succession had the entire project reeling and rather down in morale.

Fortunately McAlpin, Dr. Ian Tizard (Or. Brown's successor at TAJ\tl.U), and Dr. Benny Gallaway and his wife Nancy (Nancy is McAlpin's daughter) proved to be tough customers and stuck with the Project. It is also great I y to the credit of the officers of Texas A&M University that despite much adverse publicity the school did not bow to the ill informed public pressure.

"O.K., Dingle," you say, "so how do you know all this stuff?" A fair question, of course, with a very simple answer. I heard some of the rumors and read some of the bad P.R. and decided to go to Texas to see for myself.

I visited Dr. George C. Shelton, Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine. I took a grand tour of the TA.MU facilities with Dr. Ian Tizard, the TA.MU Project Leader. And I spent a couple of days with Dr. and Mrs. Gallaway who represent EBRA and have possession of the birds.

Gentle reader, I looked all of these people square in the eye and found no guile. 1 studied copies of the papers and legal documents pertaining to the whole Macaw Project from the beginrung. I am convinced, intellectually and at the gut level, that the Macaw Project was and is an honorable undertaking if a Little naive.

"But what of the Gallaways?" you say. "Who are they'" Innocent bystanders, my friend, innocent bystanders. McAlpin's daughter, Nancy, is married to Benny]. Gallaway, Ph.D., who owns the famous fireside where this whole thing started. Originally the Gallaways had nothing to do with the whole affair. Remember, Nancy didn't even want a budgie in the house for fear the cats would torment it. But when the grand plan went to hell in a handbasket and the best laid plans crumbled about McAlpin's ears what was he to do with 126 macaws corning out of quarantine? Give them to his kid to take care of, naturally. 

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