African Grey Parrots Are Popular—And It’s Fueling Illegal Trade

IRA FLATOW: Hi, it’s Ira Flatow. The SciFri Book Club is reading The Biggest Ideas in the Universe by physicists, John and Carol, for our December pick. And you are invited to join the fun. If you’re in New York City, come see Sean and me live at the Green Space on Friday, December 5. Or join us online for the free livestream. Sign up for the Book Club today at sciencefriday.com/bookclub to get all the details.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hey, I’m Flora Lichtman. And you’re listening to Science Friday.

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Can you picture parrots, the cute, charismatic stars of your TikTok feed, perched at the center of a global crime web?

RENE EBERSOLE: The illegal wildlife trade is on par with guns, human trafficking, and drugs. But the thing is, it’s a low-risk, high-reward crime.

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FLORA LICHTMAN: Surely, you’ve seen a video like this at some point.

SPEAKER: Who let the birds out? Chirp, chirp, chirp.

FLORA LICHTMAN: African gray parrots are internet stars. And you can see why. I mean, they’re fascinating to watch. They sing, tell jokes, sling profanities. They’re perfect for the algorithm.

But how do they get from African forests to your feed? That’s the subject of a new investigation into the global parrot trade and the black market for wild African grays that’s threatening their existence. Joining me now is Rene Ebersole. She’s the editor in chief at Wildlife Investigative Reporters and Editors, WIRE. And her feature story on the African gray parrot trade just published in Rolling Stone. Rene, welcome to Science Friday.

RENE EBERSOLE: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So what’s the demand like for these birds?

RENE EBERSOLE: There’s a very strong demand for African gray parrots. They’re very popular online. Many of the TikTok stars have millions of fans. And that attention online has fueled an interest in more people having them as pets. And because of that interest, people who tend to exploit systems, legal or illegal, are trafficking them.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I feel like I’ve heard that they’re really smart, first-grader-level intelligence. Is that internet hype? Is there science on that?

RENE EBERSOLE: There is a lot of science on that, actually. A researcher named Irene Pepperberg did 30 or more years of study with a parrot she named Alex. And she found that they can use language meaningfully. They understand abstract concepts. And they can show evidence of self-awareness.

They’re really like the great apes of the bird world. Their brains are the size of a walnut. But they do have intelligence on par with young children.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Who’s buying them? Is it a global market?

RENE EBERSOLE: It is a global market. Many of the ones from Africa– so either from the wild in Central and West Africa or from breeding farms in South Africa– are shipped to the Middle East and Asia. And that’s because the United States banned wild bird imports quite a long time ago. And then Europe followed banning wild bird imports because of concerns about avian influenza. So right now, most of the birds that are bred in Africa or taken from the wild are either going through legal channels or illegal channels to the Middle East and Asia.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And how much do they cost?

RENE EBERSOLE: When I was in Dubai, I saw them for up to $800. But here in the United States, you might pay as much as $7,000 for an African gray parrot. And those birds are descended from wild African gray parrots brought here before the United States made the ban.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow. OK. And what is their conservation status in the wild?

RENE EBERSOLE: In 2016, the species was declared endangered, at risk of extinction in the wild. Wild African gray populations have plummeted by up to 99% in some parts of Africa since the 1990s. It is illegal for African gray parrots to be taken from the wild. Even in the DRC, as of this August, it was finally made officially illegal to take or trade African gray parrots from the wild.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, so tell me more about this black market for them.

RENE EBERSOLE: So there’s two ways that they are trafficked. Either they’re caught in the forest by poachers– and it’s important to say that many of these poachers are just trying to make a living. It’s really not the poachers who are the problem. It’s the people who are buying them and shipping them illegally and these commercial enterprises.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The middlemen.

RENE EBERSOLE: Yep, the middlemen. The people at the lowest level are everyday people who– they might be fishermen. But they see this as another opportunity to make as little as $10 a bird. The middlemen can sell them for a lot more than that. And then the final exporters shipping them abroad, it’s as much as 10 or 20 times what the little poacher would get paid. So that’s how the ones from the wild end up being trafficked.

The other way that they can be trafficked sometimes is– it’s always been believed that the legal trade from South Africa– which is the world’s largest exporter of captive-bred African grays. It’s always been suspected that some wild birds may be laundered through that system and passed off as birds that were raised legally.

The other way birds are trafficked– and this is more of an emerging trend– is the egg trade. Eggs are a lot easier to transport than live birds. And it seems like the South African breeders– some of them, anyway. There’s always a couple of bad actors in every system– are passing their eggs off to couriers who’ve been caught smuggling them into Asia.

FLORA LICHTMAN: When you talk about trafficking, what should I be picturing? Is it, like, a paperwork thing? Or obviously, they’re sourced in the wrong way. But are they also being smuggled in a shipment of potato chips or something?

RENE EBERSOLE: They can be concealed in other shipments. And a lot of times, that’s with shipments of birds that are legal to be traded. So like, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, there’s a couple species of parrots that are legal to trade. It is legal to catch them in the wild. And traffickers will sneak the African gray parrots into one of their shipments.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How does this illegal parrot trade compare to other black markets or other things that are illegally trafficked, like drugs or guns? Is it the same model? Is it the same people?

RENE EBERSOLE: Yeah, it’s oftentimes the same criminal networks. The illegal wildlife trade is on par with guns, human trafficking, and drugs. But the thing is, it’s a low-risk, high-reward crime. Because the penalties for trafficking wildlife are vastly lower than for trafficking drugs or people.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Is there a way to tell if the bird was taken from the wild or bred in captivity?

RENE EBERSOLE: Up until recently, it really has been very difficult for law enforcement to tell. There are a couple red flags that they look for. Birds that are legally traded, when they’re bred in a captive facility, they’re fitted with tiny, little leg bands. And each one of those bands has a unique ID so that they can be tracked from the place they were born and the day or the month they were born all the way to their final destination.

So if birds do not have those bands, then they’re assumed to be illegal. So they look for that. And they look for fraudulent paperwork. And they also look for exporters who may have a history of violations.

But up until recently, it was very difficult to tell. There’s no test to tell if the animal is caught wild or in captivity. But now there is a new, emerging technique that’s been created by a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her name is Valerie McKenzie. And she’s pioneering a microbiome-based forensic technique to distinguish wild-caught parrots from captive-bred ones.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Here’s the thing that I don’t quite understand. I would think it would be harder to catch them in the wild and take them across borders than to just breed them. What am I missing?

RENE EBERSOLE: Well, the breeding actually is very expensive, because it takes them four years to become sexually mature. So for that entire time, you have to feed them. You have to keep them healthy. It’s really involved to keep a baby bird for four years to the point where it can start breeding.

But with the wild birds, they’re there for the taking. And the traders can sell them for a much higher profit margin.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And the birds that we see that you can buy here, they’re on a separate track, right? They’re not being bred in captivity in South Africa or caught in the wild.

RENE EBERSOLE: They’re bred in captivity here. Any parrot that you find in a pet store in the US was probably bred in captivity here in the United States. And its ancestors would have been brought into the country prior to wild bird imports being banned. So they are a couple generations removed from those first wild birds brought to the United States that became, like, the seed birds for those bird farms.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What’s the solution?

RENE EBERSOLE: The solution to the trafficking problem from the people I spoke to in my reporting is stronger enforcement, more resources for investigations, more forensics so that evidence can be collected to be presented in court against potential traffickers, and stronger penalties for trafficking. So that’s on that level. If people are wondering what they can do, many of the people I spoke to talked about the fact that there are a lot of parrots that have been abandoned because these birds can live up to 80 years.

Chances are, if you buy an African gray parrot today, it may outlive you. So a lot of times, they get surrendered. And then they go to refuges or bird rescues. There’s a couple of them in the country, not that many. And they’re overflowing.

So if someone decides that they really have the time it takes to have one of these very demanding pets– remember, they’re smart as a five-year-old. And they demand a lot of attention. So if someone decides that they have the lifestyle that can support that sort of pet, then, from the people I spoke to, maybe the best idea is to find a bird that needs to be adopted, just like we adopt dogs and cats instead of buying from puppy mills.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you think that the internet is changing the animal trade?

RENE EBERSOLE: Yes, for sure. The fact that you can see these animals performing and it creates a demand for more people to have them as pets is one thing. But animals are also sold illegally on the same platforms where they’re performing. The illegal wildlife trade online is thriving.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow. You launched this investigative reporting endeavor around wildlife. Why this topic?

RENE EBERSOLE: I have been writing about wildlife and the environment for more than 20 years. I have an ecology degree. So that’s kind of where I started. I started in science before I got into journalism.

And I’ve always been interested in animal behavior. When I was first getting started in science, I worked with an orangutan doing a self-awareness study. So I guess you could say that my interest in African gray parrots sort of sprung from that research that I’d done early on into animal intelligence and self-awareness.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hmm. Rene Ebersole is the editor-in-chief at Wildlife Investigative Reporters and Editors, or WIRE, and author of “An Investigation Into the Global Trade in African Gray Parrots,” just published in Rolling Stone. There’s a link to Rene’s article on our website at sciencefriday.com/parrots. Thanks, Rene.

RENE EBERSOLE: Thank you.

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Today’s episode was produced by Charles Bergquist. But a lot of folks helped make this show happen every single week, including–

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FLORA LICHTMAN: I’m Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.

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