The wild bird trade causes massive mortality through capture stress, transport conditions, and quarantine. Millions of birds die before reaching their final destination, making it one of the most wasteful wildlife trades.
Wild bird trade welfare represents one of the most mortality-intensive wildlife trades, where the majority of animals captured never reach their destination alive. The welfare timeline from capture to delivery involves multiple acute suffering events: physical trauma during trapping, extreme crowding during initial holding, dangerous conditions during smuggling transport, and quarantine stress. Survivors often carry disease, physical injuries, and behavioral abnormalities that make them poor pets. The birds that do survive frequently languish in conditions that fail to meet their complex social and cognitive needs. Captive breeding has largely replaced wild capture for common species, but illegal wild capture continues for rare and newly fashionable birds.