Continental trafficking could signal the last flight for African grey parrots

The African grey parrot population in the wild is dwindling at a rate of 21% every year. Found in West and Central Africa, the birds are sold by illegal wildlife traders as exotic pets, and their natural habitat is being destroyed. Licensing policies and practices regulating ownership of the parrots are not widely known and rarely implemented.

The birds face extinction in Ghana, with almost the entire population lost to trafficking. In other countries, numbers have decreased by over 50%. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — the parrot’s last natural habitat — poachers are trafficking the last of them. In April this year, a Congolese smuggler was arrested in Uganda with 122 parrots and sentenced to seven years in prison.

In 2017, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) moved the African grey to the list of species threatened with extinction, which prohibits trading except under exceptional circumstances.

Before this Cites relisting, pet keepers in some East African countries had to register parrots with the wildlife authorities, but this was rarely enforced. Since the Cites change, Kenya, Uganda and the DRC established procedures for registering parrots and offered amnesty to those who had bought them irregularly. 

In Kenya, the annual licence to keep a parrot costs $100 (KES12,000). Some pet keepers buy trafficked parrots but skip the licence payments, while others are unaware that the certificates have been mandatory since 2017. 

Law enforcement agencies in East African countries have focused on intercepting the growing illegal trade through online markets. Meanwhile, the physical sale of parrots between the DRC and other East African markets continues apace. An active network operates from the DRC to Kenya, with Uganda as a transit point, according to a licensed parrot keeper and a law enforcement officer who spoke to Enact.

Poachers from the DRC capture juvenile birds from their nests in forested tree canopies. They also use large woven cages to catch parrots on the ground. The eastern DRC conflict has made some locals turn to poaching birds rather than working in the illegal timber or minerals trades, which are controlled by armed rebels and pose a risk of violence.