How the legal and illegal wild parrot trade causes massive welfare harm and threatens wild populations across three continents.
Wild parrot capture and trade causes welfare harm at every stage - capture using nets or tree-felling may injure birds, small bags or boxes are used for transport causing suffocation and trauma, and holding facilities before export are often grossly inadequate. Mortality rates of 50% before reaching the consumer are documented. Survivors that reach buyers are often poorly equipped psychologically and physiologically for captive life, having been captured as wild adults. The irony is that for almost every species traded, captive-bred alternatives exist that do not involve these welfare harms.