Submitted Electronically via eRulemaking Portal

Please reconsider the proposed listing of the Military macaw and Great green macaw (Ara militaris; Ara ambiguus), Scarlet macaw (Ara macao cyanoptera; A. m. macao), and Hyacinth macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus) under the Endangered Species Act. This should be withdrawn, and that the USFWS should renew its commitment to support and not interfere with private U.S. breeding programs of these and other parrot-like species. The listing of these 4 species under the U.S. ESA as endangered or threatened will not benefit the 4 species in question, but, rather, will harm the long term prospects for the survival of the 4 species in question. An ESA listing of these 4 species will only serve to harm these species as a whole, by reducing their overall numbers, both captive bred and in the wild, and to ultimately hasten their extinction. Further, listing these species under the U.S. ESA will harm U.S. aviculture and those who rely on U.S. aviculturists for current, correct, and humane assistance in keeping all of their birds. Additionally, putting a bird on the ESA does place all types of restrictions on the sale, transport, uses and ownership of that bird in the US...and those kinds of restrictions will end up causing breeders and owners to stop working with the species. The result of that, of course, will be that the species will eventually become extinct in the US, which does nothing to help the species in the wild and we lose a "reserve gene pool" when the bird is extinct in the US.