AFA has a long history of funding medical and husbandry research, including psittacine conservation projects designed to better manage and save endangered species in the wild. AFA promotes population management and cooperative breeding programs to ensure the long-term survival, health and genetic diversity of parrots and other birds in captivity.
Recent grants include:
- The red-fronted macaw conservation project (Asociacion Armonia, Bolivia);
- Project Abbotti, conservation of the recently rediscovered Abbotti’s cockatoo (Indonesian parrot project/ project Birdwatch);
- The spix macaw project, captive propagation in Brazil;
- Nesting ecology of the slender-billed conure;
- Proventricular dilatation disease research (Schubot Exotic Bird Health Center, Texas A&M University);
- Puerto Rican parrot (PRP) reintroduction;
- A joint project with the Loro Parque Foundation in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain on artificial nest boxes for the Catey, or Cuban parakeet.
Past conservation grants have helped promote:
- The breeding biology of the Bahama parrot;
- The status and conservation of the cape parrot in southern Africa;
- The ecology and breeding biology in the conservation of the yellow-shouldered Amazon on Margarita, Venezuela;
- A preliminary study on the impact of Hurricane Gilbert on the psittacine population of Yucatan;
- Macaw conservation in Belize and Honduras in Central America; natural history of the el oro parakeet (Pyrrhura oresi);
- Determination of the status of the glaucous macaw and hyacinth macaw in Argentina and Paraguay;
- The genetics of the Puerto Rican parrot (Amazona vittata);
- Support for the Centro para la Conservation de los Psitacidos Mexicanos;
- First workshop of the management and conservation of macaws in meso-America;
- Halfmoon conure breeding consortium;
- Tracking of seasonal movements of the great green macaw in the Atlantic rainforest of Cost Rica and Nicaragua; among others.
Additionally, more than 40 separate grants have been awarded between 1982 and 1993, to proposals in avian research.