My local guide, Máximo Paico, told me that he remembers when he was a child and a group of "strange people" passed by him early that morning. A "gringo" asked him for the local names of the trees and bushes that were around him. He leads me to the exact place were this group of "strange people" saw the White-winged Guan (Penelope albipennis) for the first time, exactly 100 years after its description was first reported.

How such a large bird remain hidden for such a long time, particularly since it is so noticeable when it flies from one hillside to the other, the white patches on its wings bright like a full moon so that even the most indifferent person cannot avoiding taking notice?

Described by the Taczanowskis in 1877 from a specimen collected by Stolzmann in 1876 near the mouth of the Tumbes River, this species was known also because of two other specimens collected, one of them on Hacienda Pabur in Piura.

After many years of no scientific reports (and no surveys in the area), this guan was thought to be extinct, as stated in the relevant publications of the time, such as Vaurie´s work, Taxonomy of the Cracidae (Aves), published in 1968, and Delacour and Amadon´s book Curassows and Related Birds, published in 1973.

But it was Maria Koepcke who believed that the White-winged Guan was not extinct and could survive in the surrounding areas of the Hacienda Pabur. And it is she who encouraged Gustavo del Solar to search for the bird, when they met in 1969. At this time, Del Solar was a passionate deer hunter and a lemon farmer in Olmos, a town at the base of the western slopes of the Andes.

For a long eight years, Del Solar asked local people from the towns near the mountains about a bird as big as a domestic turkey but much more slender, entirely black but with the wingtips in contrasting white. He did finally get an answer. Sebastian Chinchay, a local man who lives at the village of Puerta de Querpón, found a bird that fitted the description given by Del Solar during a foray to the extreme upper part of the Quebrada San Isidro while looking for some lost goats. He went as fast as he could to Del Solar's farm and said to him "Don Gustavo, I have found the bird you were looking for."

The surprise could not have been greater! But Don Gustavo was cautious: "Are you sure, Sebastian?" He said: "Yes!"
"Is the bird blue, with red wingtips?" asked Del Solar.
"No, it was black with white wingtips."
"Was it small as a sparrow?"
"No, it was the size of the domestic turkey."
"Ok, let's go and find it!"

The next day, 13th September 1977, Del Solar and O'Neill, who was in Chiclayo at the time, headed to the Quebrada San Isidro. And after a three-hour walk, they finally saw what was the first White-winged Guan seen by a scientist in 100 years!
They collected one of the eight birds seen that day, and donated it to the Natural History Museum in Lima. Unfortunately, Maria Koepcke never did see the bird because she had died in a airplane crash some years earlier.

The coincidence that the guan was rediscovered just a hundred years after it was first described, gave the event the deserved title of "The rediscovery of the century". After the rediscovery, it was also realized that this rare cracid, endemic to the Tumbes area, had to be protected. The Peruvian government created the Laquipampa Reserved Zone, an area set out especially to protect the wild populations of this guan, and enacted several laws to ensure the bird's conservation.

By this time, Del Solar had begun a captive breeding program in Olmos, with the purpose of finally reintroducing the captive-born guans into the wild, and thus avoid their extinction. Now, 27 years later, there are around 60 birds born in captivity, and the reintroduction program is a reality. This program began in 2000 in the Chaparrí Private Conservation Area, and now there are about 20 released guans living in the wild and several guans have been born in the wild from parents who were born in captivity.

Now, as I watch a couple of guans resting on a Pasallo tree after eating its flowers, I believe that one of the greatest challenges for the Peruvian people is to ensure the long-term conservation of this species. It is our test to prove that we are a country that is responsible for its environment, for the conservation of its flora and fauna, and for sustainable development.

But, how?
One of the forms to help conserve the White-winged Guan, the dry woodlands of Tumbes and the other 55 birds endemic to this region, is to develop responsible birdwatching tourism to these areas.

And visitors need not only look for the rare Guan. There are many other birds that have developed special skills to survive in such an extreme changing habitat, species for every birdwatcher. These include:
Tumbes Hummingbird, Scrub Nightjar, Rufous-Necked and Henna-hooded Foliage-gleaner, Scrub Antpitta, Elegant Crescent-chest, Tumbes Tyrant, Rufous Flycatcher, Peruvian Plantcutter, Black-cowled Saltator, and others. A total of approximately 250 species of birds can be found. A good morning of birdwatching will produce around 80 species, most of them to be seen in this area only.

But we also are talking about an environmentally sustainable activity that provides economic benefits to the local people. In this way, everyone can contribute towards giving an added value to the forests and that birds that inhabit them, a value much greater than that of cutting down trees for wood fuel, or using the area for farming or cattle grazing.

The Tumbes region, one of world's richest and most threatened areas, deserves a better future both for its people and for the birds and other wildlife living there.

* FERNANDO ANGULO PRATOLONGO is Director of the Conservation Project for the White-winged Guan, and scientific advisor for the "El Huayco" a breeding reserve of raptors, first in South America to reproduce in captivity the Aplomado falcon (falco femoralis). Conservationist and a true believer that the conservation of nature well manage can benefit local population.