Tourists can travel to Manu National Park in Peru to watch hundreds of red, blue, and green macaws flock to clay cliffs, where they nibble their daily dose of natural "antacids" to counteract toxins in their diet.

As an effort to reduce the stress of habitat destruction and poaching -- two forces causing macaw populations to dwindle -- Munn and his colleagues construct fake, hollow trees out of plastic pipe to provide nesting sites. The team also hand-rears chicks that would otherwise die and successfully re-introduces them into the wild. They often rely on the knowledge of reformed bird smugglers to help them find nests in the thick forest.

As Munn says, "the creation of these parks and projects demonstrates that when properly empowered and promoted, macaws can do more than their share of the heavy lifting to save the world's richest tropical forests."