Our host in Trinidad was Mauricio Herrera, coordinator of a major conservation programme funded by Fundación Loro Parque and managed by Asociación Armonia. He aims to save the Blue-throated Macaw Ara glaucogularis by working with local landowners and villagers across the vast palm-dotted ranchlands of Beni. Our own target was to make images that would help to promote this effort.

We arrived at the end of a long dry season, three months after the last rains, with skies darkened by the smoke of grassland fires. Our first day was made pointless by this smoke, and the next two were lost to a surazo — a cold front from the south bringing lots of rain. After the long drought, this was a godsend for starving cattle and photographers alike. The surazo watered the dusty grasslands, doused the fires, and left the skies perfectly clear.

During the following days, we watched nest-boxes being built then erected in palms, listened to talks and video presentations, and attended a school workshop at El Masi, a tiny village of the Yura tribe. These activities gave us a chance to see the project working at first hand, and to take plenty of promotional photographs. On private ranches we also found and photographed the macaws. The best shots were taken early on our last morning, in low sunlight, as a pair perched in an open tree, then launched across the open pampa. To see further examples of these images, visit our image gallery.

After years of intensive fieldwork the Proyecto Barba Azul can only account for around 100 Blue-throated Macaws, and the total global population is unlikely to be more than 300, all of them in Depto Beni, Bolivia. Given that so few survive in the wild, it seems imperative that Mauricio, and his co-workers Jose Manuel and Nancho, continue to receive financial support into the long-term. For more information about the project, contact Mauricio (in Spanish) at araglaucogularis@hotmail.com, or Bennett Hennessey (in English or Spanish) at ABHennessey@armonia-bo.org