Thousands of birds seized in massive Indonesian bird-trafficking bust

Authorities in Indonesia have rescued more than 6,500 wild birds being trafficked from the island of Sumatra and destined for Java, in what’s been hailed as the single largest seizure of its kind in the country’s modern history. Quarantine authorities at the port of Bakauheni in Lampung province, the main crossing point from Sumatra to Java, worked with NGO FLIGHT to intercept a truck carrying the birds on Oct. 15. On board, they found 6,514 birds crammed into 216 boxes, mostly tightly packed and taped. They included 257 individuals from species protected under Indonesian law. Kanitha Krishnasamy, Southeast Asia director for wildlife trade watchdog TRAFFIC, said in a news release that her organization “has long monitored the caged bird trade in Indonesia and massive seizures like this one continue to alarm us.” Experts have long raised alarms that the bird trade, which heavily targets native species, is causing rapid declines in the numbers of various species in the wild, which, along with habitat loss, could drive many toward extinction. “It’s simply not sustainable and this level of extraction of unprotected species means we have little means to understand its impact on species until it’s too late,” Krishnasamy said. Keeping caged songbirds is a popular tradition in Indonesia, particularly in ethnic Javanese households. The birds are often entered into birdsong competitions, with champion birds selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Among the birds rescued in the recent seizure, all of which survived, according to FLIGHT, were some of the world’s…This article was originally published on Mongabay