The reason for new regulations: it's almost too late

[Kentuckienne]

https://www.facebook.com/exploristscience/videos/1175609019203959/

Just a short video, but if you are interested you can find out all you want. Africa's grey parrots are going to be extinct in the wild unless something changes.

 

[AmyMyBlueFront]

WOW..I never realized..Like so many other creatures.. A World without Greys would be devastating. All due to the ignorance of the human race!


Jim

 

[plumsmum2005]

No it isn't ignorance but greed and stupidity!

 

[SailBoat]

I understand the concern as a rapidly increasing number of Amazons are already at that point and at least nine are no longer found in their natural ranges.

That said, this organizations is an active participate in the continued push of CITES, which because of its regulations will shut-down Breeding across North America and Europe. So, not only will there be no Parrots in their natural ranges, there will be none in North America or Europe to be able to re-populate those areas!

Odd position for an organization that presents the need to save the Parrots? Or, did I miss something?

Do not get me wrong, I strongly believe in saving natural ranges and the life that populates it. I am just concerned about the dual edged knife that they play with!

 

[Kentuckienne]

No it isn't ignorance but greed and stupidity!

WORD! ( or as Disco would say, bird to your mother)

 

[plumsmum2005]

No it isn't ignorance but greed and stupidity!

WORD! ( or as Disco would say, bird to your mother)

Sorry this is lost on me, Who is Disco?

Do you disagree? Most likely all three words?

 

[TexasWade]

No it isn't ignorance but greed and stupidity!

WORD! ( or as Disco would say, bird to your mother)

Sorry this is lost on me, Who is Disco?

Do you disagree? Most likely all three words?

That would be an agreement

Disco, the phenomenal talking budgie! Bird to your mother is one of his phrases ---> [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhtme--h5Zs"]"I'm a Parakitty!" - YouTube[/ame]

 

[plumsmum2005]

Thanks, all I could think of was Disco Duck LOL

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgPgavmY99U"]Rick Dees Disco Duck (Live Midnight Special) - YouTube[/ame]

 

[DRB]

I understand the concern as a rapidly increasing number of Amazons are already at that point and at least nine are no longer found in their natural ranges.

That said, this organizations is an active participate in the continued push of CITES, which because of its regulations will shut-down Breeding across North America and Europe. So, not only will there be no Parrots in their natural ranges, there will be none in North America or Europe to be able to re-populate those areas!

Odd position for an organization that presents the need to save the Parrots? Or, did I miss something?

Do not get me wrong, I strongly believe in saving natural ranges and the life that populates it. I am just concerned about the dual edged knife that they play with!

Being new to the world of parrots and a tad naive if not even ignorant about certain things, this is the first thing that came to my mind. That reads to me that the survival of AGs is almost out of the hands of people that do care in any of the binding nations for said agreement. So if I wanted to breed AGs for the sole purpose of repopulating the Earth with them I either could not or could not get them to a habitat to help save them.

Seems to be some short sighted to some degree.

I hate to say this, and maybe it is somewhat selfish, but maybe it is time to make the sale of one of these birds illegal, period. :06:

 

[mh434]

We don't buy our birds, we rescue them (we have 8 parrots of various types, at the moment) from others who wouldn't or couldn't care for them, or mistreated them.

IMHO, if we endeavor to rescue the ones that are already here & need help, rather than buy them from breeders who get their stock from...???, then we reduce the demand for birds from wild populations. Who knows - if everybody did this, maybe the wild populations would be left alone?

 

[gavagai]

I'm aware of no evidence of smuggling of wild parrots into the US, EU, or Australia. I'm sure it happens, but it seems to be quite rare.

With most species that are threatened by the "pet trade," it's because of the capture of birds for sale in major cities in the same country (nearly all threatened Indonesian songbirds and tarsiers in the Philippines are examples of this). With some of the more popular species, they get exported mostly to other developing countries. You can find a lot of videos of people in Eastern Europe and China with CITES-listed mammal species that are very difficult to breed in captivity. Occam's razor suggests that these are wild-caught animals imported in violation of CITES.

With parrots, it's harder to tell, since people who have rarer species tend not to advertise the fact very loudly, even if they were imported legally before the ban or descended from those who were, and most parrots can be made to breed in captivity. However where parrots are still being captured and exported for the pet trade, it's a safe bet that they're going places where aviculture is not well-established, law enforcement is lax, and there's a lot of newly affluent people looking for a status symbol.

 

[wrench13]

You must have missed the article last year, where some ahole got coaught with dozens if not more, parrots stuffed into toilet paper tubes hung from his body. Into the USA. Smuggling parrots is alive and well here.

 

[gavagai]

Can you link it? I had a hard time imagining what parrots are both small enough to fit in a toilet paper tube and rare and flashy enough to smuggle, and drawing a blank I searched first Google for the story and then these forums for that thread. cannot find the thread, and while Google turns up a lot of articles which aren't about the US specifically plus this, where the size of the containers–which also include medicine bottles–suggest that it's probably songbirds being smuggled rather than parrots.

I'm certainly not surprised that people would smuggle rare or expensive birds, however it still doesn't look to me like the United States is a major destination for African grays, scarlet macaws, or any of the other parrots which are common and relatively expensive in US aviculture but still being illegally exported for the pet trade.