Just accepted for publication in Ibis, the international journal for avian scence, is the following article “Trade and habitat change virtually eliminate the Grey Parrot Psittacus erithacus from Ghana” by Nathaniel Annorbah, Nigel Collar and Stuart Marsden of Manchester Metropolitan University and BirdLife International. The research in Ghana which resulted in the article was financed by Loro Parque Fundación. It finds that Ghana has lost 90–99% of its Grey Parrots since 1992, a time when the population had presumably already been seriously reduced by two decades of extremely heavy trade. There is no evidence that, away from one or two localities, declines are less severe anywhere else within the West African range of P. erithacus, or across the entire range of the recently split Timneh Parrot Psittacus timneh. As a logical response, in 2016 the Loro Parque Fundación will fund A Rocha Ghana, a leading conservation organization in that country, to take actions to prevent illegal trade and protect forest. Dr. Collar is a member of the international advisory board of the Loro Parque Fundación.
