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No Bird Is an Island

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What we don't see, though, is perhaps more telling: Throughout a day of traipsing in and around the proposed area for Morne Diablotin National Park, not one sisserou parrot is spotted or heard.

Paul Reillo has known greater frustrations than tottering on a rotten log in the bush while balancing a camera prone to power outages over his head. At a similarly remote location more than a decade ago in the Genting Highlands of Malaysia, Reillo was studying the breeding habits of stalk-eyed flies, which feature exaggerated eye stalks that grow to almost twice their body length. As Reillo descended from a forest shrouded in clouds after a day of field work, logging trucks rumbled by headed in the opposite direction. The trucks were on their way to systematically remove the very habitat that enabled stalk-eyed flies to survive.

At the time, Reillo was engaged in postdoctoral research at the University of Maryland at College Park. He had earlier earned a doctorate in zoology from Maryland's Baltimore County campus and was on a career path that could have led to a tenured faculty position. Reillo describes the encounter with the logging trucks in Malaysia as a "cathartic moment" in his thinking about conservation work and academia. He came to the realization then that the "continued pursuit of esoteric academic questions was absolutely ludicrous in light of the fact that the ecosystem as a whole was being destroyed." And Malaysia was far from an aberration: Similar environmental destruction was being repeated all over the globe -- especially in poor tropical countries, where the vast majority of the world's biodiversity exists.

Reillo decided to bolt academia, but he wasn't sure how else to direct his energies. While in South Florida to interview for a job, he made the rounds of local bird sanctuaries. One of these was in Loxahatchee and owned by a medical doctor, John Vaughn. The preserve contained an eclectic group of endangered birds, such as red-browed Amazon parrots and white-bellied caiques. "I knew my birds well enough to know that what was there was very, very unusual," Reillo recalls. In 1989 he moved to Loxahatchee and took over as director of the facility. The Rare Species Conservatory Foundation was incorporated as a nonprofit in 1994, and the group purchased the sanctuary -- birds, equipment, land, and all -- from Vaughn a year later.

The preserve is down a washboard-rutted dirt road, just beyond the reach of strip-malled South Florida. Loxahatchee Groves is one of the last South Florida outposts of eccentricity. The kind of place where having a several-hundred-pound East African bongo on your property -- or 20 of them, as in Reillo's case -- doesn't prompt howls of protests from the local homeowners association.

Like most properties in Loxahatchee Groves, the 20-acre Rare Species preserve is enclosed by a fence and adorned with numerous signs warning "No Trespassing." What sets the property apart is that the fencing is draped in foreboding black nursery cloth and topped with barbed wire. From the exterior it has the look of a place where you wouldn't be surprised to spot a plane dropping off the latest black-market agricultural exports from Central America.

Inside the compound are two nondescript trailers. One serves as the administrative offices of Rare Species, the other as Reillo's home, both of which he shares with his fellow wildlife biologist, Karen McGovern. The rest of the Rare Species staff consists of three part-timers, and the entire operation is run on a minuscule annual budget of about $100,000. Reillo himself takes no salary from the foundation.

It was under these financial strictures that Reillo told the Dominican government in early 1998 that he would attempt to raise $750,000 to help purchase 1301 acres from a private company, the Dominican Fruit Syndicate, and make possible the creation of the Morne Diablotin National Park. Reillo figured that finding a few hundred thousand dollars in Palm Beach County would be simple. "We have a constituency ten miles to our east that could easily fund this," he says. "I submit to individuals and to foundations, "If you want to invest in a conservation project, find one better.'"

Reillo's confidence aside, the fundraising campaign has been somewhat less than triumphant. Rare Species has cobbled together the money but only by going into serious debt. The group has raised $439,000 -- or about $311,000 less than its goal. To keep the national park project from collapsing, a $150,000 contribution that was slated to pay off the nonprofit group's mortgage was added to the Dominica fund with the donor's blessing. And Reillo has sacrificed his own personal savings -- although he won't say how much money that is. The group now has about 60 grant applications pending with private foundations and corporations.

Rare Species' problems have been further compounded by the termination of a relationship with the Zoological Society of the Palm Beaches. The nonprofit group, which operates the Palm Beach Zoo at Dreher Park, had for two years been providing operating support to Rare Species and the Dominica program, as well as a small salary for Reillo. But in July the zoological society decided to spend its resources elsewhere.

Reillo is diplomatic about the decision, but the separation clearly came at an inopportune time. "We're disappointed, but at the same time the door is open," he says. (Dr. Sal Zeitlin, director of the zoological society, did not return calls for comment.)

Even without the added onus of fundraising, the day-to-day grind at Rare Species is ceaseless. In mid-October a mama pygmy marmoset had three babies -- one more than she is capable of raising. Reillo removed one infant from the cage and nursed it himself, right down to wiping the animal's behind. Newborn pygmy marmosets -- furry little primates that were the basis for the critters in the movie Gremlins -- must be fed every two hours, around the clock. Despite this sleep-depriving schedule of care, the animal died from pneumonia in a week.

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