cockatoo that was successfully secured from illegal wildlife trading is seen inside an empty bottle in Surabaya, East Java, Indonesia on May 04, 2015. A total of 24 birds were rescued.
(CNN)At
least 24 cockatoos have been discovered stuffed into 1,500 ml plastic
water bottles at an Indonesian port during an anti-smuggling operation.
The
cockatoos, which are described as critically endangered, were cut free
of their plastic confines by Indonesian customs officials at Tanjung
Perak port in Surabaya, Indonesia, who spotted the consignment of
illegally-trafficked birds.
One man, who it is understood brought in the birds from Makassar, Sulawesi, was arrested.
An
official from Indonesia's Natural Resources Conservation Agency
(BKSDA), told CNN that police turned over 22 live birds to the
organization, and that from his initial inspection the animals were two
species of cockatoo.
Richard Thomas,
Global Communications Co-ordinator at Traffic International, which
monitors illegal wildlife trade, told CNN that the reported trafficking
of them in plastic bottles "shows the lengths that some people will go
to try to smuggle birds."
The bird is
one that is "very heavily impacted" by illegal trade, he said. While the
species is endemic to Indonesia, it's disappeared from much of its
range and now the only substantial population is found on the island of
Komodo, with smaller populations on some other islands.
Traffic's Southeast Asia Facebook page says that the water-bottle method is "commonly used to smuggle these protected birds."
Yellow-crested
cockatoos, which were among the birds seized, were classed as
critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of
Nature and Natural Resources in 2007.
The
species, Cacatua sulphurea, has "suffered (and may continue to suffer)
an extremely rapid population decline, owing to unsustainable trapping
for the cagebird trade," according to Bird Life,
an online reference for ornithologists. It is thought that their
population in the wild numbers around 7,000 and is in danger of further
deescalation.
Rampant hunting
A
report by Indonesia's Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) in
2013 found that, even then, populations in the country were critically
low, due to rampant illegal hunting, and also due to their low
reproductive rates.
Wildlife smuggling
in Indonesia is big business, and animals captured in the lush forests
-- which are also rapidly declining due to deforestation -- are often
sold overseas to meet demand for exotic pets or for meat and medicinal
purposes.
"(The yellow-crested
cockatoos is) a breed that is at very serious risk because of excessive
trafficking of wild populations," Traffic's Thomas said. "Most of those
birds are destined to be trafficked to parrot collector and breeders,
rather than the meat market.
"There's a
lot of demand for parrots and cockatoos in southeast Asia and Europe,"
he said. "They could well have been destined for markets there, although
obviously it's illegal for wild-caught birds to be exported."
The pangolin, according to National Geographic the world's most-hunted mammal, is poached by the thousand
to feed Chinese and Vietnamese demand for its flesh and its scales,
which are a key ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine.
"The
raging practice of online wildlife trade has become a serious threat
for wildlife conservation, because most of the traded animals were
captured from the wild, not from captive breeding as claimed by many
dealers," Swasti Prawidya Mukti, campaign officer for Profauna, a
nonprofit working for the protection of forest and wildlife in
Indonesia, said in a statement in January.
"Wildlife
crime has become a transnational business. Therefore, governments
should take this more seriously as such act... clearly (violates) our
national law."
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