84 



would make. 



The most pressing i^ed is to allocate money to the fund that was created by the act. This 

 fiind is supposed to be useiyKe kinds of programs and studies needed to support and enforce the 

 act (e.g., investigations of the potential of sustainable harvesting, or the development of genetic 

 markers to monitor the birds from captive breeding programs). Funding is also needed to ensure 

 the proper enforcment of this legislation and to deter smuggling. 



Finally, ten bird families were exempt from this act due to political and not biological 

 reasons, and this exception should be eliminated. The only reason these families were exempted 

 from this legislation was because of pressure from special interest groups - a few game bird 

 breeders tied up the telephones of a congressional aide. 



Excluding these so called "game birds" from this legislation actually reinforced a market 

 for them. Traders no longer able to export species they have traded for years will switch to these 

 species, which up until now have primarily been captive-bred. And they will find a market for 

 wild birds in zoos, breeders, and private collections. 



Only a handful of the species in these families are covered by the Endangered Species 

 Act (ESA) or CITES. Many of the rest are thought to be declining in the wild. For example. 

 Oscillated Turkeys are not on CITES, nor are they listed as endangered species, but they are 

 declining rapidly. They are bred in captivity, but they are also being taken from the wild. 

 Similarly, this legislation endorses greater importations of Black-fronted Piping Guans from 

 Argentina and Horned Guans from Guatemala. Both species are considered at risk of extinction 

 by lUCN, but are not on CITES or listed under ESA and are imported by private breeders. 

 Ptivate breeder are vying to import White-eared Pheasants from China, even though they are 

 very rare in the wild, because the captive population in the U.S. suffers from inbreeding. The 

 first Chinese importer of this species would make a killing! 



Excluding entire families from this bill to promote the conservation of exotic birds was 

 simply inappropriate. It gives no impetus to develop programs to the manage genetic diversity 

 of captive populations of these families, since wild stock will always be available, or to promote 

 their sustainable use in the wild. The act fosters the mismanagement of birds that are not only 

 threatened by habitat destruction, but are often hunted throughout their range by local peoples. 



Instead of excludii.g these families or others (e.g. raptors), let the U. S. Fish and Wildlife 

 Service evaluate which species should be traded. Most game birds of economic importance are 

 primarily captive-bred and would be placed on the "clean list" of captive-bred species anyway. 

 In reality, no exemption for them is needed in the definition of exotic bird. 



Literature Cited 



Beissinger, S. R., and E. H. Bucher. 1992. Can parrots be conserved through sustainable 

 harvesting? BioScience 42 : 1 64- 1 73 . 



Collar N. J., & P. Andrew. 1988. Birds to watch: the ICBP world checklist of threatened birds. 

 Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., ICBP Techn. Publ. No. 8. 



, & A. T. Juniper. 1992. Dimensions and causes of the parrot crisis. Pages 1-24 in New 



World parrots in crisis: solutions from conservation biology (S. R. Beissinger and N. F. R. 

 Snyder, Eds.). Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press. 



