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Cockatoos & Pigeons

In Penang, Malaysia, an Indonesian woman was charged in the Magistrate's Court on two counts of unlawful possession of a total of 186 wild birds which are among the 12 protected species under the Protection of Wildlife Act 1972.

Marlena Setepu, 33, a textile trader, from Medan, pleaded guilty to committing the offence in Lebuh Pantai and she is charged under Section 64(1) of the Protection of Wildlife Act 1972 which carries a maximum fine of RM5,000 or a jail term of three years ( or both) on conviction.

On the first count, she is charged with possession of two cockatoos Cacatua Moluccensis or Moluccan Cockatoos, without the permit of the Wildlife and National Parks Department.

On the second count, she is charged with possession of eight pigeons of the Goura Cristata species and 176 cockatoos including Cacatua Alba or Umbrella Cockatoo, Cacatua Galerita or Eleonoras Cockatoo, Cacatua Leadbeateri or Leadbeaters Cockatoo and Probosciger Atterimus or Palm Cockatoo, without the necessary permits.

Judge Rosilah Yop who acted as magistrate has fixed a date for evidence and sentence.

The judge granted her bail of RM4,000 in one local surety and ordered her travel documents to be impounded by the court. October 2003

How many of you saw BBC1, 2 December 2002, 8.30pm - AIRPORT?

Over 30,000 birds directly imported to the UK ever year. For the PET TRADE. Did you see the macaws, amazons, pionus, toucans etc, plus the geckos (many dead)... Cooped up in tiny crates and boxes, the only way Heathrow staff knew they were dead, was by the smell?  Do you really want to see this continue to happen? 

For more information see  Imported Parrots

Palm Cockatoos

Parrots and Profits

"AAAWWK!"

Artie's small black eyes glittered, and his cheeks began turning a deep red. Then a spectacular black crest rose slowly on his head, the way a human might lift suspicious brows. Sitting in her Rockville, Maryland, pet shop, Artie’s owner, Ruth Hanessian, spoke gently to the large black palm cockatoo and lovingly kissed his bare red cheek. The crest went down, and Artie began to crack a Brazil nut. Artie is a bird with a past, and his story is typical of the odyssey many wild-caught parrots still experience.

Eighteen years ago, when he was a chick, poachers stole him from his nest in the remote jungles of Indonesia. He joined an illegal shipment of more than 200 palm cockatoos secreted out of Indonesia and laundered with new “legal” papers—first in Malaysia, and then in Singapore—for export to the U.S.

It was here, in a private Singaporean quarantine facility, that Artie first saw Richard and Annamarie Stevenson, an American couple with a Florida-based wholesale wildlife business that had sunk about $200,000 into the cockatoos.In the months after the birds arrived in Singapore, half of them had either died or been destroyed from an outbreak of what was suspected to be Newcastle disease, a lethal virus that can be devastating to domestic fowl and other birds. Even so, the Stevensons had to be smiling. No one had ever shipped this many palm cockatoos to the US before, and these birds were going to be the couple’s ticket to wealth and luxury.There was a good reason black palm cockatoos (Probosciger aterrimus) at the time were practically unknown to most breeders in the US: They were not allowed out of their native Australia and New Guinea. The only legal way anyone could export them from Indonesia was with the permission of then-President Suharto himself, which the Stevensons didn't have. But this was the early 1980s, the very height of the international illegal bird trade, when laws governing the importation of wildlife into North America were vague. In fact, the US had been named the world's largest importer of wild parrots by its own Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS). More than 800,000 birds were imported legally every year, and probably twice that number entered the black market.

Parrots were the primary focus of the trade, their beauty, intelligence, and rarity often making them as coveted as a Ming vase or a Stradivarius. Trade stretched globally from Australia to Africa, with dealers making as much as $600,000 per year just selling parrots. Birds were smuggled through international airports and across dusty border checkpoints in suitcases, tire wells, rolled-up newspapers, hollowed-out car doors, and lengths of PVC pipe. When Artie and the other 99 cockatoos arrived at Miami International airport one sultry afternoon in September 1983, the birds had been crowded into their small wooden crates for so long that many were sick and dying.

But for the Stevensons, business was great. Only the year before they had brought in 27 other palm cockatoos with the approval of the USFWS. The birds were barely a day out of USDA-licensed quarantine when collector Richard Schubot strode unexpectedly onto their Ft. Lauderdale ranch. Richard Stevenson knew that the cantankerous Schubot had made millions in McDonald's franchises and wanted to amass the greatest private collection of exotic birds in the US And what Schubot wanted, he got, one way or another.
"He says 'how much do you want for them?'" Stevenson recalls, his nasal Cape Cod accent making him sound like a Boston cabbie. "And I says, ‘$5,000 each.’ And he says 'Fine, will you take a check?' Then he says 'Here is a shopping list of birds I'm looking for, and can you get a hundred of these black palms?'"This time the Stevensons weren't waiting on Schubot. Earlier that summer they had placed ads for the cockatoos in several major newspapers, never imagining that a sale of close to $600,000 in birds so rare no US zoo had ever bred them would attract suspicion. It did. Months before, the USFWS and the Department of Justice had managed to obtain a copy of Indonesia's byzantine export laws with the help of Don Bruning, the Bronx Zoo's expansive curator of birds, and were now preparing to seize the cockatoos as smuggled Indonesian “treasure.” While US laws on the importation of exotic birds were hazy, those on trafficking stolen wildlife, known as the Lacey Act, were not. Faced with the fact that the birds were also protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), the Stevensons’ defense crumbled. They forfeited all but two parrots to the USFWS in exchange for $45,000, a settlement Bruning still finds shocking."They were caught red-handed bringing in birds illegally," Bruning says, emotional after 17 years. "I mean they should be getting fined, not paid for doing it!"

The government now began distributing the cockatoos. Some went to the consortium of 11 zoos around the country that had been caring for the birds since their seizure - including two still on exhibit at the National Zoo’s Bird House - while eight cockatoos were returned to Jakarta to smooth the feathers of the Indonesians.

The remaining birds were auctioned (as the USFWS often did with confiscated animals) to breeders with solid cockatoo track records. Ramon Noegel, one of the buyers, eventually sent his three birds on permanent loan to the Avicultural Research & Breeding Center (ARBC) of Loxahatchee, Florida - the machine-gun patrolled, avian Xanadu belonging to none other than Richard Schubot.

Today the ARBC boasts some 120 palm cockatoos, the largest collection in the US. Artie, otherwise known as #62, was one of four cockatoos donated to SeaWorld. Five years later he was sold several times to different private breeders, finally ending up in Ruth Hanessian's pet shop, where he now sits in his cage, chomping macadamia nuts and flirting with anyone wearing black.

Sadly, his saga is far from unique.by John Tidwell

Photo of Palm Cockatoo © lul@mac.com

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