Illegal parrot trade

Defenders of Wildlife
Parrots
Defenders focuses international efforts on Latin American parrot species including the military macaw and scarlet macaw.

All 22 Mexican species are at risk; 11 species are classified as endangered, 7 as threatened and 4 as under special protection. The foremost threats parrots face are loss of habitat and illegal trapping for the pet trade.

Approximately 75 percent of captured parrots die before reaching the consumer, which in Mexico translates to roughly 50,000 to 60,500 annually. Between 80,000 to 90,000 parrots are poached on an annual basis in Peru.

Defenders' Impact
In 2007 we published a landmark report on the illegal parrot trade that was used by the Mexican Congress to reform the Wildlife Law to ban all trade of parrots.

Illegal trade has since decreased by 32%. Our international efforts helped get many endangered species of parrots, including the yellow-crested cockatoo, yellow-headed parrot and the African grey parrot uplisted to Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) that bans international trade.

Since 2013 we’ve helped in the protection of military macaw nests in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico achieving the highest productivity of fledgling chicks. From 2014 to 2018, we helped in the release of 189 scarlet macaws in the Los Tuxtlas Biosphere Reserve, which is now the second-largest wild population in Mexico.

In 2020 we helped create an alliance of parrot researchers and NGOs called Loros Sin Fronteras (Parrots Without Borders) to fight illegal trade of parrots in Mesoamerica."

I know there is a huge problem with nest raiding of quaker parrots , as they nest communal . These illegal , stolen from the wild nest babies end up in tge Florida pet trade. I've seen on Craigslist over 200 babies stuffed in a barrel and being sold cheap of course as unweabed tuny babies. It majes you sick to see....Miami is a hotbed in illegal parrot trade.

( for full article visit https://news.mongabay.com/2020/09/for-brazils-most-trafficked-parrot-the-poaching-is-relentless/)
For Brazil’s most trafficked parrot, the poaching is relentless
Dimas Marques
3 weeks ago


It’s a natural phenomenon that you could set your calendar by: every August, the turquoise-fronted parrots (Amazona aestiva) of Brazil’s Cerrado biome start laying their eggs. The chicks hatch soon after, and by November have left the nest.

The cycle is so constant that every year, for decades, poachers have been stealing eggs and chicks from the nests to supply the illegal pet trade. There are no precise figures for the number of birds that get caught or die in this process, but it’s believed to be in the thousands each year.

“In the São Paulo metropolitan area alone, undoubtedly more than 12,000 hatchlings are brought every year to supply illegal sales,” says Marcelo Pavlenco Rocha, president of the NGO SOS Fauna. Rocha has been following the illegal trafficking of turquoise-fronted parrots in the Cerrado for 18 years.

Gláucia Helena Fernandes Seixas, a researcher and coordinator of Projeto Papagaio-verdadeiro (Turquoise-fronted Parrot Project), says more than 11,000 chicks have entered the Wild Animal Rehabilitation Center (CRAS) at the Mato Grosso do Sul Environmental Institute (IMASUL) after being seized by state agencies over the past 32 years. And this is just the tip of the iceberg; most of the poached birds are never confiscated, Seixas points out.



Dozens of turquoise-fronted parrot chicks were recovered in a seizure in Ourinhos, São Paulo state. Image courtesy of the Federal Highway Police.
“Considering the fact that many chicks die during the different phases of this illegal process, which involves taking them from their nests, holding them in unhealthy containers and transporting them inadequately, and that surveillance doesn’t manage to intercept most of the birds taken illegally from nature, it is estimated that the animals received at treatment centers represent a small portion of the number of turquoise-fronted parrots that are actually poached,” says Seixas, who has worked to conserve the species since 1992.

Turquoise-fronted parrots are classified as a near-threatened species on the IUCN Red List. “This category is given to species that are near to or have a strong probability of reaching the status ‘threatened with extinction,’” Seixas says.

The species is also among those included in the National Parrot Conservation Plan of Action, called PAN Papagaios in Portuguese, at the Environment Ministry’s Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (ICMBio). It’s considered the most highly trafficked species among the six included in the PAN and, according to Seixas, also the most sought-after on the black market of Brazil’s 12 native parrot species. “This is due to its reputation as being the ‘best talker’ when compared to other species,” she says. “This is how it earned the nickname ‘true parrot.’”

But wildlife trafficking isn’t the only threat to these parrots. The turquoise-fronted parrot also suffers from the destruction and alteration of its habitat due to deforestation, fires, and conversion to pasture and farmland. They also face retaliatory hunting by farmers frustrated by the damage that the birds can cause to crops.



An adult turquoise-fronted parrot with its egg inside a nest in Mato Grosso do Sul state. Image by Gláucia Seixas/PPV-PdA-FNB.
How the traffickers work
Outside the Cerrado, turquoise-fronted parrots are also found in the Caatinga, Pantanal and Atlantic Rainforest biomes. They’re found in Brazil’s northeast, southeast, and central-western regions, as well as in parts of Bolivia and Paraguay.

Much of the trafficking that occurs in Brazil today is in the Cerrado, especially the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where officials consider the activity one of their main environmental problems. Gangs of poachers also work in the states of Mato Grosso, Goiás, Tocantins, Minas Gerais, Maranhão, southern Piauí and western Bahia.

In 1997, Seixas founded the Turquoise-fronted Parrot Project, today run by the Parque das Aves bird park and the Brazil Neotropics Foundation, in response to the poaching going on in Mato Grosso do Sul. Through research she carried out and read, she found that the birds typically lay their eggs in August, hatch them in September, and the young birds leave the nest by November.

This consistent schedule and the fact that turquoise-fronted parrots always seek out the same trees to lay their eggs and raise their young allow animal smugglers to plan their activities and steal the hatchlings with little effort. About a month before hatching, the traffickers converge on Mato Grosso do Sul’s border region with the states of São Paulo and Paraná, where they make deals with local landowners, squatters, workers and others about the price of each chick and details for their extraction.

The most intense poaching goes on in the towns of Jateí, Batayporã, Bataguassu, Ivinhema, Novo Horizonte do Sul, Anaurilândia, Santa Rita do Pardo, Nova Andradina, Brasilândia, Naviraí and Mundo Novo.

" Nearly a third of the 145 parrot species in the Neotropics (Mexico, and Central and South America) are threatened, making them among the most endangered groups of birds worldwide. Parrots fetch an average of $800 in the U.S., and the number of parrot chicks taken from the wild is estimated at up to 800,000 per year. Parrots are particularly sensitive to poaching because they have low reproductive rates."
https://www.conservationmagazine.org/2001/07/pet-trade-wrong-poaching-major-threat-to-parrots/

And, it just never stops! As long as there are customers, the black market will continue, especially when the profit margins are so large.

Thanks for the article!

One of the groups helping parrots
https://www.parrots.org/