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Biologist Laura Fournier examines a day old scarlet macaw chick that is part of a breeding program at the ZooAve Center for the Rescue of Endangered Species in La Garita, Costa Rica, Thursday, April 24, 2008. Endangered scarlet macaws born in captivity are reproducing in the wild for the first time in Costa Rica's southern Pacific coast. (AP Photo/Kent Gilbert)

Captive macaws now reproduce in the wild in Costa Rica
Endangered scarlet macaws born in captivity are reproducing in the wild for the first time on Costa Rica's southern Pacific coast.
The ZooAve Center for the Rescue of Endangered Species has released 100 of the birds into the wild in the last decade. But biologists didn't spot offspring until last year, said biologist Laura Fournier.
Since then, they have recorded 22 chicks born in the wild, and four more scarlet macaw couples have laid eggs, Fournier said.
The parrots once occupied all of Costa Rica. But hunting and poaching dramatically cut their population, and they are now found only in two national parks along the coast.
The biologists' goal is for 200 birds to populate an isolated coastal area.