Qatar's royal family is trying to save the world's rarest parrot, a bird not seen in its native Brazil for more than 10 years, conservationists say.

Just 76 of the cobalt-plumed birds, known as Spix's macaw, exist, all in captivity, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Sheik Saoud bin Mohammed bin Ali al-Thani, a member of the royal family, has a number of the endangered birds in a fenced 1.6 square mile private wildlife compound about 20 miles west of Doha.

Saoud, a keen collector who keeps gazelles, brilliant birds of paradise, Arabian sand cats and majestic macaws at the compound, hopes to rescue the rare parrot from the edge of extinction and reintroduce it back into the Brazilian jungle.

Private menageries are common in the region, said Ryan Watson, a 33-year-old Australian hired by Saoud to head the blue macaw breeding program, and some have come under criticism.

"We make no secret that the sheik collected animals from black-market dealers, from the wild, from wherever he could," Watson said, explaining that before 2001 when Qatar signed a key international treaty restricting trade in endangered animals, it was not illegal to import rare animals.

But after Saoud flew rare Beira antelopes out of East Africa, local elders accused him of poaching.

"That's the last time there's been any of that kind of activity," Watson said. "We've made the transition from hobby farm to the breeding center we are now."

Since then Saoud has found allies in the conservation community, Watson said, and the staff regularly collaborates with international experts.

The facility currently shelters 55 Spix's macaws, nearly 75 percent of the world's known population.

"The bottom line is, the future of the species now rests in the hands of the sheik," said Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International.

"It's 50-50," Watson said of the species' chances of being successfully reintroduced into Brazil, but added it's time to try.

"If they're not out in the wild, what's the point?" Watson asked. "Wild animals belong in the wild. Otherwise, what we're doing is not conservation."

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