Thanks you and special gifts

At the end of the first week, we got a lot of backers!  I'm sending everyone who backed us some special videos of how and where baby conures are raised when I rear them, as well as some conference video that helps further explain some of my dissertation research.

So, what's so unusual about sun conures that makes it worth your attention? Sun conures are an example of species that is in a lot of trouble in the wild but exist commonly in people's homes, because they can have more than 10 offspring a year and don't mind doing so in people's living rooms, yards, or professional breeding set ups!  This situations occurs with other parrots, including the blue-throated macaw (estimated less than 250 mature adults by BirdLife International); the hyacinth macaw (estimated 4,300 mature individuals, population decreasing);  or the liliac crowned amazon (estimated 4,700-6,700 mature individuals and decreasing.) By contrast, a healthy wild population of parrots could be represented by the white-fronted amazon, (estimated to be between  500,000-4,999,999 individuals in 2008.) Thank you for helping us investigate this unique situation where the private pet trade produces enough individuals where species recovery could be helped by animals from captive breeders who sell birds as companion animals. The first week's backers will help build momentum during week two, where we send out some press releases and submit to internet content aggregation sites.