Maui resort strictly for birds
By Timothy Hurley
Advertiser Maui County Bureau
HA'IKO, Maui — It offers the best in health care, the finest food, top-flight housing and an idyllic setting in a temperate climate — pretty much everything you'd want in retirement living.
Timothy Hurley • The Honolulu Advertiser
Especially if you have feathers.
This parrot and 69 others live in luxury, pampered by a paid staff of 10 people, thanks to WebTV founder Bruce Leak of San Francisco, who spent more than $1 million building a 5.5-acre facility for unwanted birds.
The Maui Animal Rescue and Sanctuary is a sort of luxury retirement villa for parrots, a place where no expense is spared for the comfort and well-being of its colorfully plumed residents.
Backed by more than $1 million in annual support from WebTV founder and president Bruce Leak of San Francisco, the nonprofit foundation opened quietly on Maui nearly two years ago with the aim of addressing the problem of unwanted parrots.
Bird veterinarian Fern Van Sant leaves her practice in Los Gatos, Calif., once a month to fly to Maui, where she dispenses medical care to 70 parrots housed in spacious, custom-built cages spread out across 5.5 acres of manicured gardens.
A visit to the sanctuary can be a noisy and colorful experience. There are blue-and-gold macaws, bright red eclectus, yellow-fronted Amazons and a rainbow of other parrot species.
They may be castoffs in their former lives, but here they are stars, pampered by a paid staff of 10. Each day, the birds are fed a variety of organic fresh fruit and vegetables and given a refreshing mist shower. Fresh branches and parrot toys are placed in the cages, and the staff offers lots of one-on-one attention.
"They're pretty happy," said Van Sant of her Maui patients. "They can climb, they can fly and yell. They can be birds."
Van Sant is pretty happy, too. The mother of two teenagers met Leak years ago when he was an up-and-coming computer engineer with a pet African grey parrot. Now, she's been given the opportunity to work her dream job, given "carte blanche, within reason," to set up the best parrot sanctuary money can buy.
"To be turned loose to do everything the way you've envisioned, the way things should be done, is an unequaled experience. This has been fun," she said.
The goal is to set a new standard of care for parrot rescue, which takes abandoned and neglected birds out of bad situations and gives them new lives.
There is no consensus on how severe the problem of unwanted pet parrots is nationally, according to Van Sant. At her practice in Los Gatos, she often receives five calls a week from people looking to surrender their bird.
According to the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, there are 3 million to 5 million pet parrots in the United States. The council also estimates that most new owners buy their bird on impulse and that the average parrot, which can live well past the age of 80, will have seven homes in its long lifetime.
Given the challenges of living with a large bird, it is no surprise that the problem of unwanted parrots has reached alarming levels, said Van Sant.
At the Maui Animal Rescue and Sanctuary alone, there are 50 birds on a list waiting to get in. And there would be many more if the foundation maintained a higher profile, she said.
But this project isn't like most parrot rescue operations, which seek to place birds in new homes. Van Sant tried that and found too many of them wound up back in the ranks of the unwanted. The plan here is for these pet birds is to live out there lives in the relative splendor, comfort and safety of the sanctuary.
While the foundation houses 70 birds now, it is moving to grow larger. Plans are in the works to expand onto neighboring property and to accept at least 50 mitered conures now living in a wild flock nesting in nearby Huelo, where they have become a nuisance.
The organization's board of directors recently approved a plan to try to capture the birds and to set up a large aviary on the expanded property. The goal is to spare the flock from potential extermination by state wildlife officials, who have been monitoring them.
Parrots could harm the Islands' native ecosystems and cause damage to a variety of crops. No decisions have been made on what to do with the Huelo birds.
