wild population mate often or at all. The young remain with their parents for up to a year. Juveniles reach sexual maturity around 2–4 years of age. Distribution and habitat For a century and a half after it had been described, the species was only known from sporadic occurrences in the bird trade, and the whereabouts of the wild population was unknown. A wild population was eventually discovered in 1978 by ornithologist Helmut Sick in Bahia in the interior northeast of Brazil. Until this discovery the birds were thought to be simply a variant form of the closely-related hyacinth macaw. Lear's macaw roosts on sandstone cliffs, which were formed by streams cutting through outcrops. It is known from two colonies at locations known as Toca Velha and Serra Branca, south of the Raso da Catarina plateau in northeast Bahia. In 1995, a roosting site holding 22 birds was located at Sento Sé/Campo Formoso, to the west. From these roosts, the macaws travel throughout the region (the municipalities of Campo Formoso, Canudos, Euclides da Cunha, Jeremoabo, Monte Santo, Novo Triunfo, Paulo Afonso, Santa Brígida and Sento Sé), relying on stands of licury palm to find much of their sustenance. This palm stand habitat is thought to have once stretched over 250,000km2 in Brazil, but has been much reduced due to clearance for agriculture. Cattle grazing in the palm stands also appear to be damaging and killing the seedlings, thus posing a challenge for the recruitment of new mature palms -such stands were found to have very little young licury palms. In response to this, tens of thousands of palms were propagated and planted in fenced-off areas in the early 2000s. Lear's macaw also requires pre-existing natural cavities found in the sandstone cliffs in which to nest. The availability of such cavities may eventually limit population growth, and thus one group of conservationists advised that more cavities should be excavated artificially. Conservation Population and conservation status This species is currently listed as an endangered species (CITES I). Yamashita, one of the first scientists to study this bird in the wild, in 1987 estimated that the global population numbered just 60 birds in 1983. The estimated global population in 1987 was 70 birds. The wild population was surveyed as some 170 individuals in 2000. Based on this, Birdlife International (BI), which has written the IUCN Red List assessments, gave an estimated population of