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WILDLIFE CONSERVATION SOCIETY 



Prior to the act, there was no Incentive for a producer country 

 in the tropics to encourage careful, thoughtful production of 

 ranched wild birds. 'ITiub. prior to the act, no tropical land 

 owner had any reason for developing reeponeible parrot ranching, 

 which migJit include hanging extra nest boxes and taking, raising, 

 and selling only the last hatched or runt chicks from these 

 boxes. Kather, prior to the WtfM, all parrots exported from 

 tropical countries were mined in a cruel, nonsustainable manner 

 that led to heavy post- trapping mortality and the inevitable 

 "tragedy-ot-the-commons" style deBtruction of wild parrot 

 populatioriB by irresponsible, roving trapperB. 



Now, for the first time, tropical peoples who own and manage 

 their rain forests (such as the 11,000 Indians and rain forest 

 colonists that I have helped land title in ajj area the size of 

 Connecticut in Peru over the past ten years — see 5 Dec 1994 issue 

 of TIHK magazine) have a reason and incentive to consider 

 sustainable, humane parrot ranching in wild rainforest habitat as 

 a way to add value to their standing forest. In this way, they 

 may find that parrot ranching that follows the riilee of the WBCA 

 may provide them with a fxin and sustainable income source from 

 intact rain forest (a habitat type that may be exhuberant and 

 blologicalJy diverse, but unfortunately is generally quite 

 inedible and unmarketable unless cleared and replaced by coffee' 

 and chocolate plantations, which are only partially sustainable 

 In poor Amazonian soils). 



As far as the complaints lodged about the WBCA by people who call 

 themselves "avlculturists" . these people traditionally always 

 have Bhown the greatest coi»cern about maintaining unlimited 

 access to low-priced birds, from whatever source. For them, 

 collecting and breeding birds Is an obsession that knows few 

 limits. They claim to be concerned about the conservation of 

 these species in the wild, but in fact they normally donate 

 little time or cash to field conservation efforts (which for 99X 

 of endangered bird species ave much more cost effective dollar 

 for dollar than are captive breeding conservation efforts). 

 Nowadays, many of the most aggressive "avlculturists" devote 

 considerable resources and time to lobbying for changes to the 

 WBCA that would allow easy import of so-called "captive bred" 

 birds produced at foreign facilitiee. I know from my ptersonal 

 experience of 20 years as a research scientist in Peru, Bolivia, 

 Brazil, and Paraguay, that many, if not most or all, facilities 

 in tropical countries that claim to be producing and selling only 

 captive bred birds are actually Just laundering illegally caught 

 wild birds. Thus, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is quite 

 correct to be very suspicious of any foreign facilities that 

 claim to be squeaky clean. 



