Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Scarlet Macaw Reintroduction Project
GAIA HOTEL AND RESERVE
BORIS MARCHEGIANI
I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.
E.E. Cummings
“This property had scarlet macaws before,” says Boris Marchegiani of Gaia Hotel and
Reserve. He is somewhat reverent as he recounts how the birds were present in the former
wildlife refuge center that existed there when he first bought the property, but were trans-
ferred to the town of Silencio farther south before the present hotel was developed. With the
development of the current reintroduction program, those very same birds have finally come
home.
It all began with a conversation in a bar when local Erik Stadler suggested to Boris that
it would be great to see macaws in the area again. It got Boris thinking. “I have a tendency
to take thoughts and turn them into reality!” he laughs. He made a call to a friend who was
involved in the care of the region's wildlife and an amazing convergence of circumstances
occurred. The friend had in fact been looking for somewhere to start another reintroduction
program, because existing breeding stocks were beginning to suffer from a lack of genet-
ic diversity. What they wanted though was someone they knew to oversee the project —
someone like Boris. “It shouldn't have happened,” Boris says, shaking his head at the amaz-
ing coincidence of it all. “The probabilities of it happening were zero.”
Soon Gaia was preparing for its special guests. Boris knew it wasn't going to be easy,
despite reassurances tothecontrary.“Whentheysaythatthingsareeasy,itmeanswatchout,
because they are really complicated and expensive!” He envisioned a small cage to begin
with but that quickly became a large cage, and a smaller cage within it and a trapdoor… it
all added up! There was also the rehabilitation of the birds themselves.
