Recently, I had the pleasure of visiting Washington D.C. One of my stops was the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History where I was able to see a very sad reminder of our only endemic parrot, the Carolina Parakeet. It was a badly faded mount that was tucked away in a display case in a lower floor hallway where few visitors passed. It seemed tragically fitting to me that nobody really cared to save them when they were still alive, and the species doesn’t get any more respect as a museum skin today. It is said that Carolina Parakeets bred freely in captivity. So, why didn’t anyone bother to breed them? It makes me angry that I will never have the pleasure of seeing a live Carolina Parakeet, and it got me to thinking about the relationship between aviculture and conservation today.
Aviculturists are typically very supportive of conservation efforts, but in contrast, conservationists rarely support aviculture and often dismiss bird keeping as contributing to the problem of disappearing bird species. This is unfortunate because aviculture is actually a very powerful conservation tool, and it diverts the attention from the real universal problem, which is degradation of habitat.
Not only can aviculture preserve rare species in captivity
when their wild habitat is being destroyed, but it improves the general public's
awareness of the wonderful diversity of bird life. Aviculture helps people
connect with birds that most would never otherwise see in person. While helping
to spur interest in birds and their plight in the wild, aviculture also provides
a ready supply of birds for pets that are of much higher quality than those that
are caught in the wild. This greatly reduces the demand for birds taken from the
wild and is therefore a powerful tool to reduce illicit trade.
A well-known author recently asked me about the trend of declining numbers of
smuggled birds coming into the U.S and why I thought smuggling was less common
today. I explained that it was because we have a robust supply of domestic-bred
parrots here to fill the demand for pets, and we have done a very good job of
educating people that domestic-bred birds are far superior as pets than anything
that is wild-caught or smuggled.
To illustrate how effective we have been at educating the
public, one only has to look at the difference in the consumer demand as
evidenced by the prices for African Greys when imports were still legal. Around
1990, imported Greys could be purchased out of quarantine for $150. At the same
time, domestic hand-reared Greys were selling at $900-$1200. The prices indicate
that people much preferred the domestically-bred, hand-reared birds, and the
price they were willing to pay illustrates the comparative value placed upon
them.
The conservation community tends to concentrate only on preserving birds in
their native wild habitats. This is exactly what they should be concentrating
on, but sometimes it is a futile effort. Our efforts to protect species from
extinction would benefit from a broader view. There will always be a demand for
pet birds. Without a healthy avicultural community to supply those birds,
poaching and smuggling become much more attractive. Aviculture promotes valuable
public awareness of birds. Aviculture also provides an opportunity for some
species to be preserved despite what is happening in their wild habitat. Due to
geopolitical and economic forces outside the control of conservationists, not
all habitats or species can be saved in the wild. Aviculture might be the only
hope for these species. Had there been a robust avicultural community at the
time, the Passenger Pigeon, the Dodo, and the Carolina Parakeet would still be
alive today.
