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Importation of Captive-Bred Birds Under the WBCA 



The WBCA allows the import of foreign captive-bred birds. One avenue for importing such 

 birds is through the approval of foreign qualifying facilities. Final regulations delineating the 

 requirements for the approval of foreign qualifying facilities have not yet been finalized. 

 Consequently, this section of the Act remains inactivated. This does not mean, as many have 

 mistakenly assumed, that the WBCA bans the importation of captive-bred birds into the 

 United States and should therefore be modified to facilitate importation of these birds, but 

 rather that the release of the final regulations needs to be hastened. 



We acknowledge the frustration of having to wait for final regulations to be issued. In 1988, 

 The HSUS, Animal Welfare Institute and nine other animal protection organizations forced 

 the FWS into court over a delay in the issuance of regulations implementing portions of the 

 Lacey Act Amendments of 1981. The Final Rule was eventually issued in 1992, eleven years 

 after Congress instructed the FWS to the promulgate regulations. 



Despite the delay in issuing these regulations, captive-bred birds are entering the United States 

 through other avenues provided by the WBCA. Since the implementation of this Act, United 

 States imports of captive-bred exotic birds have remained stable, at approximately 50,000 birds 

 annually. Foreign captive-bred birds can be, and have been, imported under WBCA 

 cooperative breeding program exemptions. In addition, species for which there is no trade in 

 wild individuals are included on an "approved list" and can be imported without a WBCA 

 permit. Currently, there are more than 50 species of exotic birds on this list, including those 

 captive-bred birds that are most commonly imported for the United States. 



Requirements contained in the WBCA for the approval of foreign captive breeding facilities 

 should not be weakened in any way. Without adequate regulations to ensure that captive -bred 

 imports were truly bred-in-captivity, wild birds could be laundered easily into the United States 

 pet trade. Operation Renegade, a long-term undercover operation of the FWS Division of 

 Law Enforcement documents the ease of laundering wild birds as captive bred. Individuals are 

 awaiting sentencing for one such scheme, which involved smuggling eggs of highly endangered 

 Australian cockatoos into the United States to sell what amounted to more than one million 

 dollars worth of birds under the claim that they were captive bred. In another case, these same 

 endangered Australian birds were being smuggled into New Zealand, then exported into the 

 United States and other countries with export permits stating they were captive-bred. 



Essentially, actions to exempt captive -bred birds from the Act or weaken requirements would 

 sanction the importation of wild, threatened and/or legally protected bird species into the 

 United States. Without regulation under the WBCA, any CITES-listed bird could be imported 

 simply with an accompanying export permit stating that the bird was bred-in-captivify. A 

 number of foreign nations have a history of providing "legal" export documents for tens of 

 thousands of illegally traded birds. One of the largest commercial importers of wild birds 

 (prior to the WBCA) is now in prison for smuggling thousands of protected wild birds, worth 

 millions of dollars, into the legal commercial bird trade. He simply bribed foreign officials to 

 provide the required CITES export documents. High profits from illegal trade serve as a 

 powerful incentive for laundering wild birds as captive-bred. 



