The black-billed parrot Amazona agilis, currently categorized as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, is endemic to Jamaica, with an estimated 95% of its population believed to reside in Cockpit Country. Cockpit Country is a dense, montane, tropical forest in the west-central uplands of the island, with high levels of endemism, and traditional and Indigenous communities living on the periphery. There have been few studies—none recent—of the distribution and abundance of the area's extant species owing to the density of the forest, its remoteness, and the largely unnavigable terrain, particularly in the forest reserve.
Recent research explored the catch yields of traditional parrot hunting in Cockpit Country (Gibson, 2020, Journal of Ethnobiology, in press). Statistics for the 2018 and 2019 hunting seasons (July–September) suggest a significant decline in the black-billed parrot population, with the total take < 5% of that of the yellow-billed parrot Amazona collaria, also endemic to Jamaica. There are, however, limitations to this study. Yellow-billed parrots were used more extensively as lures during hunts than were black-billed parrots, which could account for the differences in total takes. Large flocks of black-billed parrots have been reported by Indigenous communities in fruit trees around villages, months after the hunting season. Such spatial and temporal changes in distribution may be a response to diminishing food sources within the forest interior, where parrot hunting is traditionally practiced. Although more research is needed to determine the distribution and abundance of the black-billed parrot, a number of emerging and increasing threats could place more pressure on this species, which is a habitat specialist, than on its wider-ranging congener.
Two of the three black-billed parrots caught by hunters in 2019 appear to be hybridized with the Puerto Rican parrot Amazona vittata. The 2019 hunting season also marked the first observation by the hunters, in the 42 years since the eldest living hunter began hunting, of the Near Threatened plain pigeon Patagioenas inornata. This reinvigorates ongoing debates around the possible migration of the Puerto Rican subspecies of the plain pigeon to Jamaica, where some scholars and conservationists believe it may be being misidentified as the Jamaican subspecies. The two hybridized black-billed parrots may be emerging evidence of non-migrant species from neighbouring Caribbean islands arriving in Cockpit Country. There are plans for research to investigate this, using GPS tracking. Any increased competition from such arrivals could become an additional threat to the black-billed parrot.
Currently known threats to the black-billed parrot include nest depredation by the Jamaican boa Chilabothrus subflavus. But, as part of a community-based conservation project conducted by the authors, camera traps installed in previously unmapped areas of the forest interior have recorded feral cats, black rats and mongooses. These small mammals could also be potentially responsible for black-billed parrot nest predation, particularly in the forest interior, where the black-billed parrot breeds.
