Thick-billed Parrot. Photo: Greg Homel, Natural Elements Productions

Efforts to save some of the world’s rarest birds took an important step forward in October, when President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa of Mexico signed into law a bill banning the capture and export of wild parrots. The bill was introduced following the 2007 publication of a joint report by U.S. conservation group Defenders of Wildlife and the Mexican organization Teyeliz, A.C., which detailed the full extent of the impact of the Mexican parrot trade on wild species. According to the report, some 78,500 parrots and macaws are illegally caught in Mexico, each year, with a startling 50-60,000 of these dying before they ever reach a purchaser. So compelling were the data that the Mexican Senate passed the bill in April 2008 with only one abstention and no votes against.

Parrots are a highly imperiled groups of birds, with 64 species (including parrots, parakeets, amazons, and macaws) appearing on the IUCN Red List as critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, or extinct in the wild. Of the 22 parrot species found in Mexico, seven are listed as either endangered or vulnerable. Six of these are found nowhere else outside of Mexico, including the Thick-billed Parrot, which now likely numbers fewer than 2,000 individuals (to learn more about efforts to save this species, see the latest Bird News Network videocast).

“The news that Mexico’s parrots will be protected by a ban on parrot capture and export is extremely encouraging,” said George Wallace, Vice President of American Bird Conservancy’s International Division. “We applaud the Mexican Government for their action, and hope that other countries follow suit with similar legislation.”

The Mexican trade ban comes a little more than a year after the European Union permanently banned the import of wild birds. Although it was concern over the spread of avian influenza that initially prompted a temporary EU ban in 2005, there had been increasing calls for a halt to the wild bird trade to protect the birds themselves. The ban brought the EU in line with the United States, which had banned the import of wild birds in 1992 under the Wild Bird Conservation Act; however, the illegal smuggling of birds across the U.S.-Mexico border has continued to fuel the capture of Mexican parrots.

Despite this illegal U.S. demand, most of the trade in Mexican parrots is within Mexico, with birds sold at stores and markets across the country. Up to 4,000 parrots have been allowed to be captured each year, but the lack of an effective enforcement system has resulted in tens of thousands more being taken illegally, threatening wild populations. With the new ban, the distinction between illegal and legal birds will no longer be an issue.

To read the full Defenders/Teyeliz report, visit www.defenders.org/programs_and_policy/international_conservation/mexico_program/stopping_the_illegal_parrot_trade.php.