Fuertes’s Parrot Hapalopsittaca fuertsi has been photographed for the first time ever in a tiny patch of cloud forest in Colombia’s remote Central Andes by Proyecto Hapalopsittaca, a team of six Colombian students funded by the BP Conservation Awards programme. This is the first concrete evidence of the species’s continued existence since it was discovered in 1911, although there were sight records in 1989.

Team leader Jorge Velasquez described the moment when 14 birds swooped through the mist and landed in front of him as "a miracle from heaven".

Fuertes’s Parrot is Critically Endangered. It is beautifully coloured and is known to local people as ‘loro multicolor’, or ‘multi-coloured parrot’. Two bird collectors from the American Museum of Natural History in New York discovered Fuertes’s Parrot in August 1911. These latest sightings are in a tiny patch of cloud forest close to where the bird was originally found, but like that location, the forest is in danger of being destroyed as it is daily cleared for firewood and agriculture.

The findings come after preliminary searches assisted by the American Bird Conservancy throughout the Colombian Andes failed to locate Fuertes’s Parrot but succeeded in locating new populations of the endangered Rusty-faced Parrot H. amazonina.

Velasquez commented "My team’s task has only just begun as we must urgently start the vital job of protecting the species". "We hope to encourage local people to protect their last forests, as the fragile fate of the multi-coloured parrot remains in their hands", he added.

Proyecto Hapalopsittaca is assisted by Fundación ProAves-Colombia, Fundación Natura, Conservation International, The Natural History Museum, and Instituto de Ciencias Naturales–Universidad Nacional de Colombia. The team was a Gold Award Winner in the 2002 BP Conservation Awards, a joint initiative between BirdLife, Fauna & Flora International and BP.

For further information, please contact the multi-coloured parrot project team at fundacion@proaves.org or see www.proaves.org