by Sheila Train
Shortlisted in the 2026 PureTravel Writing Competition Stories For Survival
There are journeys that reshape the way you see the world. Twenty years ago, I traveled deep into the Pantanal on an expedition with dedicated conservationists to witness a project to protect the Hyacinth Macaw, or Arara-azul. I remember standing beneath manduvi trees, watching their cobalt wings flare brilliantly against the dawn, and wondering if these efforts would ever be enough. In the first week of September 2025, a piece of extraordinary news echoed through the press. After two decades, the Hyacinth Macaw is finally returning to the wild. Reading those words filled me with emotion,a surge of awe, gratitude, and pure wonder. What a turning point!
For years, the Arara-azul seemed destined to disappear. Habitat loss, illegal wildlife trade, and human negligence pushed this magnificent bird, the largest parrot in the world, toward silence. Its cobalt plumage, once common over flooded forests and expansive savannas, became a fleeting memory. But in the Pantanal, conservationists, local ranchers, and communities refused to surrender that brilliant blue flame. They protected nesting trees, rehabilitated injured birds, and nurtured fragile chicks with tireless care until the Pantanal’s skies could blaze with their color again.
When I joined a small team of researchers at dawn, the wetlands were waking. Mist hovered delicately above the water, distant grunts of caimans punctuated the silence, and the hum of life rose with the sun. We moved carefully through the reeds, past ipê trees heavy with yellow blossoms, to a small clearing where macaws perched quietly in the branches. And then it happened, a quiet, suspended moment, a flash of impossible blue high in the tree, radiant and alive, almost like a brushstroke of the sky itself.
High in the branches of a lone manduvi tree, a Hyacinth Macaw leaned over her nest, gently feeding her chick. There was no rush of wings, no sky torn by color, only the tender rhythm of survival, deliberate and patient. I had seen photos, even videos, but nothing prepared me for the stillness, a scene both fragile and powerful, a lullaby of persistence. It was the hush of a species pulled back from the edge, a whispered promise that hope, when nurtured, can truly flourish.
Standing there, I realize that conservation is not a headline or a single heroic act. It consists of countless small, deliberate decisions: a rancher leaving a manduvi tree standing, a biologist watching a nest through long nights, a community choosing to value and protect the wild neighbors in their midst. The turning point was not a single instant; it was a thousand moments of care carefully woven together until the sky could sing again.
As the sun climbed higher and the arara-azul moved gracefully through the branches like living sapphires, I felt a quiet shift inside me. We often speak of loss as inevitable, as if the world’s beauty is doomed to fade. But here, in the Pantanal, I saw the opposite. I saw that what is broken can be mended, that absence can transform into presence, and that the future is not yet written.
Photo by Agnieszka Stankiewicz on Unsplash
