African Grey Parrot Smuggling
Jeevesh Konuru
1/13/11
Period 2
Essay
Current Event:
Scores of African Parrots Rescued From Alleged Smuggler
The Congo African Grey Parrot is a endangered parrot prized as a pet for its outstanding ability to speak and even communicate simple phrases. The African Grey is in fact a legal and outstanding pet when bred in captivity. Unfortunately as on January 11 these parrots are often smuggled in order to avoid the tedious job of breeding and weaning. A woman in Africa used a fake permit to steal over 130 of these rare birds to sell in the UK black market. She fed the birds alcohol laced sugarcane in order to calm them and make them drowsy for the trip. The African Grey black market is large and growing.
What I learned from this is article is that people are desperate enough to drug the birds in order to smuggle them. My personal thought about this sad news story is that the birds are being senselessly stolen from there habitat. When a bird is wild caught, legally or not, they are much cheaper for the consumer to purchase. So if the person was to save the trip to Africa and just breed the birds in captivity they could easily sell the birds for 1 grand each since they are much tamer. That’s a $300-$700 increase in profit. I think desperate people will continue to smuggle the birds and the birds will eventually be driven to extinction. Even though people will still be able to watch there captive birds talk, they will never see the real thing sour.