Corruption drives up illegal trade in parrots

Written by Eugene N. Nforngwa

Tuesday, 16 March 2010 15:32

YAOUNDE—Illegal trade in African grey parrots has grown into an organised crime involving powerful politicians, airline companies and tentacles in many countries around the world, we reveal.

The trade is thought to be more lucrative than trafficking in drug, arms and other wildlife species. Almost everywhere, the birds are in high demand for use as pets because of their beautiful colours, gentle nature and ability to mimic humans.

Wildlife conservators now worry that the scale of the illegal activity poses a big threat to the population of African grey parrots, which are endemic to the rainforests of West and Central Africa.

Every year, an estimated 52,000 grey parrots are illegally taken out of the wild from Cameroon to Europe and the USA, even though trade in the species are banned both in the country of origin and the two destinations.
Most traffickers go through the Gulf of Eden, where regulation is weak, and from there, the birds are laundered unto the European and other Western markets as locally bred, says a wildlife law enforcement expert.

But stopping the activity has been made difficult by high level corruption and oversight in most countries with the resources and knowhow to enforce the law, says Ofir Drori of the Last Great Ape Organisation, LAGA.

“It is a very lucrative trade. Sometimes it even beats ivory and drug trafficking. It is motivated by corrupt officials, well established criminals,” says Mr Drori, whose NGO has been involved in wildlife law enforcement in Cameroon since 2006.

“When you are doing shipments worth very high amounts of money, you have a very strong bribery power. It is easy to assume that this power actually plays a role,” he says.

The population of African grey parrots is not exactly known. But it is estimated that something like 21 percent of the global population is taken out of the wild every years. The actual percentage could be a lot larger because most of the birds die during capture and transportation.

“Between 1994 and 2003 more than 450,000 parrots were captured and exported under controls that required a permit from a national authority to certify that the export was not detrimental to the species in the wild,” says wildlife blogger Dave Harcourt.

In addition to illegal exports, that number is far beyond quotas needed to ensure the survival of the birds, says Mr Harcourt.

In Cameroon, a situation called local extinction, in which communities that used to find parrots on the outskirts of their towns no longer see them, is already emerging in more and more places.

In 2007, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reclassified grey parrots from a species of “low concern” to one of “near threat” on its wildlife red list, giving them a status requiring more protection.

Cameroon banned trade in African grey parrots three years ago. At least nine people have so far been persecuted for involvement in illegal capture and trade in African gray parrots in Cameroon.

But that has failed to address illegal operations. The inability of the judiciary to persecute the majority of culprits, especially the high profile ones, has strengthened the hand of suspected traffickers.

“A very high government official was removed from his post for being in the heart of this trafficking but nothing was effective because none of these people [who traffic parrots] are persecuted,” says Mr Drori. “What we have now, one and half or two years after, is that the same issues persist."

Wildlife campaigners accuse airlines companies for deliberately aiding the trade by either overlooking falsified government permits or ignoring the ban currently in force outright.

“The same Ethiopian airlines that we have accused in the past for collaborating or at least being aware that they were facilitating illegal activities still continue to play a role now,” says Mr Drori.

“The same companies that were behind the last trafficking are doing it now. The culprits – criminals and traffickers - are people who are well-known but corruption is a major, major obstacle.”

Mr Drori says the lack of information about the population of the birds in Cameroon is part of the strategy of traffickers to keep their lucrative but illegal activity going.

“From the late nineties, there was never a survey to know the status of African grey parrots in Cameroon. I believe there is a reason and there are many individuals that did not want this research to happen.

“What we can say is that anybody out there can imagine what can happen to any population of any bird if every month we have more than a thousand moving out of the country. Besides this, even to get those 1000, a lot more are dying in the process.”

Like any other organised crime, the issue is complex and has many ramifications. Links exist between illegal trade in African grey parrots and other species of wildlife. But worse could be happening.

“Beyond the links that are already there between trafficking in African grey parrots and trafficking of apes, there is a more general link between trafficking wildlife and drug and arms trafficking,” says Mr Drori.

The internet is now compounding the problem. It is not playing a major role now but more and more Cameroonians advertising parrots sales, there is fear that the use of the internet for trafficking would soon become a major issue.

“It is very easy to capture parrots here. It is very easy to capture other protected species like chimps, gorillas and so on. These species are in demand outside from private collectors who sometimes do not care much about their survival in nature, as long as they can get a leopard in their yard. Many private collectors do exactly that,” says Mr Drori.

“The illegal trade right now is only limited by the factor of the connection between demand and supply. So basically this trade needs some kind of trust and contact.

“We are afraid that the internet has potential in connecting more of the demand with more of the supply. So right now, we are trying to check how the internet is playing more and more of a role in the trade of endangered species and we are trying to catch it.”

In the meantime, more of the responsibility lies in the hands of the final consumer in Europe, the United States or anywhere else in the world. Mr Drori says the public can play a big role in limiting the crime.

“We are talking to people out there who have the parrots and care about the parrots and are passionate about the parrots. I say take your responsibility, think about the parrot you have now and understand that if you love these parrots so much, you have a certain responsibility.

“Try to tell this to more people. Try to go to your animal shop and ask more questions about where those parrots are coming from, how sure are they that selling more parrots now is not going to risk the survival of the species in countries like Cameroon.”