The Last Flight of The Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird

tags: The Last Flight of The Scarlet Macaw, conservation, endangered species, parrots, politics, Bruce Barcott, book review

Nonfiction books are often thought of as being "good for us", as if they were literary vitamin tablets, but many people take their summers off from their vitamins by reading trashy novels or mysteries while ensconced under an umbrella on a sandy beach. So what would you say if you could read a book that has the best qualities of both genres? If you think that such a book doesn't exist, well, think again: Bruce Barcott's recently published book, The Last Flight of The Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird (NYC: Random House; 2008), is that book. It tells the true story of a woman who courageously faces down a corrupt Central American government and several international corporations to protect what she loves.

This witty and well-written book tells the compelling story of transplanted American adventurer, Sharon Matola, also known as the "Zoo Lady" of Belize who spearheaded a tremendous six year battle to save the only known habitat of the last 200 scarlet macaws in the country from being flooded by a proposed dam.

The author begins by his tale by delving into his colorful heroine's peculiar personal history. We learn that Matola's love for the tropical rainforest began shortly after she joined the Air Force and took a wilderness survival course in Panama. But after her Air Force adventures, Matola did try to be normal for awhile. She fell in love with a dentist and settled down in the suburbs of Iowa City, but she quickly found that married life was too confining. She panicked. Matola hopped a train and ran away to join the circus, where she became a tiger tamer. A few years (and adventures) later, she was hired to help film a nature documentary about orphaned native wildlife in the small tropical country of Belize. When the filming ended, Matola was unemployed, but still responsible for the care of a motley group of the film's stars, an orphaned jaguar, puma, ocelot, and some tropical birds. So she did the most sensible thing under the circumstances; she started a zoo.

After a rocky start, the Belize Zoo became a big hit: it filled a tremendous hunger among the people by showing them their amazing wealth of native wildlife, which most of them had never seen, and provided them with a sense of pride in the natural wonders in their tiny country.

But the love affair with the nation's wildlife did not last because the Zoo Lady learned that there were plans to build a dam that will flood the pristine Macal River valley near the Belize Zoo. The Macal valley was an environmental Noah's Ark populated by jaguars, tapirs, pumas, river otters, ocelots, howler monkeys, tapirs, harpy eagles -- and by the last 200 scarlet macaws that nest in the country. Scarlet macaws that ecotourists pay good money to see. It doesn't take long before Matola declared war upon the government and the international corporations proposing to build the Chalillo dam, especially after it was revealed that dams in general cause a tremendous amount of environmental destruction upstream as well as down, that this dam will be constructed on geologically unsafe earth immediately upstream from a city of 15,000 people, and that this dam would result in higher energy rates for the citizens of Belize while making a few corrupt government officials fabulously wealthy. Barcott succinctly sums up the situation thusly: "the dam was a fiasco: environmentally devastating, economically unsound, geologically suspect and stinking of monopoly profiteering."

Matola's efforts to protect the Macal River earn her a place on the Belizean government's loudly trumpeted list as an "an enemy of the people" even while children continued to cheerfully wave and shout "Hello, Zoo Lady!" as she rode her motorcycle through the countryside. Because she persisted in her battle, the government decided to punish her by building a new national dump next to her zoo despite the fact that runoff from the landfill would end up polluting the nearby river and the people who use its water. This punative move was finally stymied after Britain's popular Princess Anne visited the country and spoke out against it.

In addition to the unique Matola, Barcott's storytelling introduces us to a large cast of other colorful characters: several of the People's United Party politicians such as the astonishly smarmy "Minister of Everything," Ralph Fonseca, and party spokesman Norris Hall; the British-Belizean politician and entrepreneur, Lord Michael Ashcroft; Jacob Scherr and Ari Hershowitz of the National Resources Defence Council. In the pages of this book, you also become aquainted with the astonishing beauty and richness of this tiny country, as well as learning a little about how the politics in third world countries actually work. Not only that, but reading this book really makes you want to visit Belize itself.

Even though this book is nonfiction, it reads like a thriller -- you will find yourself perched on the edge of your bed long past your normal bedtime, turning the pages as quickly as your eyes can read them .. and then what happened? The author does a spendid job of weaving together a wealth of information about the ecology of dams, the politics and conservation of endangered species, the background of the National Resources Defence Council (NRDC) and the Privy Council of England, the history of Belize and the many injustices suffered by this tiny nation and how they conspired to damage the country yet again, and a quirky cast of characters -- all of whom are fascinating enough to make Carl Hiaasen envious.

This must-read book is a clear voice in a wilderness of confusion regarding the clashes between people and wilderness, progress and the environment, politicians and citizens. You don't need to love parrots or hate corrupt politicians to be enthralled by this book because in the end, it is a powerful tale about a very unusual, passionate, committed, stubborn -- and inspiring -- individual. "People like Sharon are rare and strange and sometimes aggravating," Barcott writes about his hero. "These people aren't perfect. They aren't simple heroes. They are complex human beings. And we need them. Because without them the world would be lost."

Bruce Barcott, author of The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier (Sasquatch Books; 2007), is a contributing editor at Outside magazine. His feature articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, Sports Illustrated, Harper's, Utne Reader, and other publications. He contributes reviews to The New York Times Book Review and the public radio show Living on Earth, and is a former Ted Scripps Fellow at the University of Colorado. He lives in Seattle with his wife and their two children.