Parrots as valuable as cocaine

Serbia is an important point on the route used to smuggle exotic birds from Africa, say European investigators and "Vremena" sources. Endangered species of parrots in Western Europe cost tens of thousands of euros each. Birds can be as profitable as drugs for criminals, and the damage to nature is enormous

Serbia is an important stop on the route for smuggling exotic birds from Africa, as European investigators and sources tell Vreme magazine. Endangered species of parrots in Western Europe may cost tens of thousands of euros. Birds can be as lucrative for criminals as drugs, and the damage to nature is vast.

Jacquot parrots are said to be difficult to breed when caged, but Halid Redža (67) merely smiles at that. In his kitchen, in a quiet Zemun neighborhood, there are five couples of these gray African in cages which are near extinction in nature. At Redža’s, eleven baby birds hatched last year.

“They are emotional, just like people. They have to like one another and then they mate for life. You just have to figure out which ones like each other,” says this trader of birds.

Halid Redža, known as Akan, lives in a house that smells of bird seed. In his office is a basin with worms, in display case there are countless little bottles with medications and vitamins. For the birds that Redža sometimes has brought in fron Africa arrive exhausted and needing protein. “It is very important to know, by looking at their droppings, what vitamins they are missing,” says this man with a pleasant voice, speaking over the sounds of the parrots and TV news.

Everything used to be different before. As a child in the 1960s, Redža watched Zemun street kids trap birds and sell them at the outdoor markets. Nobody was worried about this. Today his house is known as a Belgrade address where exotic species can be acquired. From little finches to impressive cockatoos.

The big hit is a long-lived gray parrot that can talk. “Sometimes they shout at the dogs to scram. They learned that from me,” says Redža.

A jacquot costs between eight hundred and a thousand euros. In the Netherlands or Germany, customers are prepared to pay twice as much. In African countries such as Tanzania, which banned the export of birds several years ago, the impoverished people capture gray parrots in the wild and sell them for a few dollars to wholesalers.

The stark difference in price means that the birds can be more lucrative than drugs. The United Nations and Interpol estimate that the traffic in wild animals and plant species annually runs to between seven and twenty-three billion dollars on the black market.

According to the claims of western investigators, one segment of exotic bird smuggling travels along the Balkan route, through Serbia. So they can chirp in cages in affluent European countries, some species have been brought to the verge of extinction in Africa. Then they are transported along risky smuggling routes through Serbia. According to Europol's estimates, half of the smuggled birds do not survive the journey.

“There are smugglers everywhere,” says Redža. He knows that many birds from Serbia cross the border. “Clearly the smugglers have their schemes. I don't have any idea what they are.”

Vreme spoke with traders, police, experts and many sources in Guinea, Serbia and Holland, in order to reconstruct the smuggling routes. When questions are raised about this, one often runs into silence and intolerant glares. In contrast to the trafficking of drugs, weapons, or people, there is scant interest in the smuggling of birds. Far too many are profiting from this from the shadows, and that is where they prefer to remain.

SHOPPERS DON’T ASK WHERE THE BIRDS ARE FROM

A rainy September day last year: thousands of people poured into a vast hall in the central Dutch city of ‘s–Hertogenbosch. A raucous choir of hundreds of avian species reverberated off the ceiling with its neon lighting. The birds were crowded into miniature cages or wooden boxes. This was the AviMarkt, which was advertised as the largest bird market in Europe, with a tradition stretching back over seven decades.

Two million birds are kept as pets in Holland, and in all of the EU there are some fifty million pet birds. Many pet owners are not satisfied with limiting themselves to canaries and pigeons.

“People always want something that someone else has, and always bigger and more expensive. It’s the same with cars,” says Harald Garretsen, while he walked among the cages of finches, toucans, lovebirds and the rare gray parrots. “They don’t care much about where the birds come from.”

Garretsen has been taking on windmills his whole life. For four decades he has been at war with smugglers of wild animals, and today he is an inspector at the Dutch consumer protection agency. In ‘s–Hertogenbosch he searches for illegal birds and fraudulent documents. He puts on his glasses and looks closely at the legs—the ring can only be legitimately placed on baby birds; if it is mounted on adult birds, Garretsen can spot this. Last year he impounded a large number of birds.

The inspector knows that many birds are like hens laying golden eggs for the criminals, epsecially if they are on the endangered species list. A pair of breeding parrots may cost as much as €100,000.

“Songbirds are being traded for their colour, their song and their perceived rarity. In Europe, they are a status symbol. You’re cool if you have rare birds,” we are told by Chris Shepherd, executive director of the Monitor Conservation Research Society. “No one wants the birds that were fashionable last season, they want something new,” says Shepherd.

THE DEMAND FOR FRESH BLOOD

The only sale of birds permitted in the European Union is that of birds bred in captivity, while importation is strictly forbidden. The ban from 2005 was in response to avian flu, which is raging across the continent once again. Over the last fifteen months in Europe some fifty million chickens and other birds have been culled in order to prevent the spread of the disease.

“But the demand for exotic birds is still around,” said Inspector Garretsen. “This means two things: the market goes underground and the prices go sky-high.”

A loophole in regulations bothers José Alfaro Moreno, who is leading the fight against smuggling wild animals within the Europol law enforcement agency. Moreno’s team has its offices in a gray building in Scheveningen—a neighborhood of The Hague, a city known for international jurisprudence and a detention unit.

“The breeders always require fresh blood. They can’t keep breeding offspring from the same birds, because otherwise you’re breeding brothers and sisters.” Here, as Moreno says, is where the smuggled specimens come in, they are the fresh blood. “The breeders take the documents of the dead breeding bird and give them to a new, smuggled bird.”

An identification ring will be attached to the leg of their baby birds and nobody will be able to prove their origin after that. “This is how the smuggling is laundered. The baby birds become legal in the EU,” Moreno says.

Dutch Inspector Garretsen says that the smugglers prefer countries bordering on the EU such as Serbia, Albania, Turkey, or, earlier, Ukraine. He says that an important route runs from Africa to Belgrade and then across the Hungarian border.

“As far as we know, couriers usually transport the animals in vans, often with the knowledge of the border police. Also the border between Hungary and Serbia is long, with vast forests. The foresters know the routes and their salaries are modest—so they can earn a little more by helping the bird smugglers,” said Garretsen.

Moreno, a high-ranking official in Europol, says much the same, and adds that these shipments sometimes number thousands of birds. “The Balkans are a hotbed of bird smuggling,” he said. “This is a case of organized crime.”

THE BALKAN ROUTE FOR EVERYTHING

In a Belgrade café on Vračar sits an official from the prosecution, who does not want her name to appear in the media. She says that the police in Serbia have succeeded now and then in intercepting minor smuggling of animals, but they have not yet impounded a whole truckload, for instance, nor have they found proof of organized crime.

“Serbia is a transit country for all kinds of smuggling. The same route is used for the trafficking of people and animals. But, of course, the people are much more important; nobody cares much for criminals dealing in wild animals,” said this source.

“I figure that only one of a thousand cases of smuggling wild species ends up in a courtroom. This is mainly because the police don’t collect enough evidence, or they have inadequate resources and knowledge to hold their own with this form of crime. This is a specific area, and we have too few experts,” this well-informed speaker added.

Nebojša Vasić understands these word well. This man from the Department for Prevention of Smuggling within the Serbian Customs has seen many things over the last years. Especially birds. He says they are the most frequently smuggled animals.

“Live birds are transported inhumanely. Once, in January, we found eight parrots in boxes that were attached to the bottom of a car. Or they pack the birds in jute potato sacks and put them into jackets, trousers, under car seats, under luggage in the trunk. Many birds don’t survive,” Vasić told us.

But after the “Balkan birds” affair—when it was discovered, early in this century, that tens of thousands of smuggled birds from Serbia ended up in Italy on restaurant plates—there were no major arrests by the police and customs. “We catch both local people and foreigners, nothing is predictable. We often catch the middlemen, the drivers,” said Vasić.

Several of the people Vreme spoke with pointed to the markets of small animals or birds, the largest of which are held in Subotica, Pančevo, Požarevac. You can often see buyers there whose cars have foreign license plates—which indicates that the birds will be illegally taken out of the country.

To conduct this kind of criminal trade one must be knowledgeable about the merchandise. Four years ago, all six large black cockatoos were stolen from a private zoo in Kolut, north of Sombor—right on the border with Hungary and Croatia. The owner estimated the value at a total of €80,000. One can count on the fingers of one hand how many zoos in Europe have these impressive birds.

HOW CAN A POLICE OFFICER RECOGNIZE A BIRD?

Vasić and his colleagues generally apprehend smugglers who do not have the necessary papers with them, though some do have falsified papers. But customs officers are not ornithologists. And even if they were, no ornithologist could identify all the endangered species of birds at a glance. Sometimes, says Vasić, the only thing that indicates whether a bird is legal or endangered is a little bit of red on the tail.

In these cases, he consults with colleagues from the EU-TWIX database or the Belgrade office for compliance with the CITES convention. This convention regulates international trade of flora and fauna specimens, but it has numerous drawbacks (see framed text below).

There are only two people working on CITES in Belgrade, as part of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. They issue permits for importation of animals into Serbia, as long as the animals are not on the endangered species list. The Ministry did not respond to a query from Vreme. A request for an interview was also ignored by the Veterinary Directorate, which is tasked with receiving imported animals, examining them and overseeing quarantine.

Several people who spoke with with Vreme expressed serious suspicions that birds from the endangered species list were being brought into Serbia, but that at the Belgrade airport—where they arrive on both regular and freight flights, mainly Turkish Airlines—very little is checked. Some say that the Veterinary Directorate nonchalantly approves the entry of animals.

“The Veterinary Directorate is probably the most corrupt service in Serbia. Whether they are checking on the health of imported animals or are dealing with stray dogs, they are completely corrupt,” says one well-informed ornithologist.

Two other biologists say that the customs or police sometimes call them when a shipment of birds arrives at the airport or when animals are impounded. But, this does not always happen. Sometimes they merely send photographs of the birds, and then they are only given a few minutes to identify the species.

Milan Ružić met us at the Novi Sad office of the Bird Protection and Study Society. Ironically, downstairs in the same building there is a pet shop selling small animals, where they have tiger parrots for sale for a few hundred dollars.

But Ružić is interested in larger birds, especially domestic ones, which are often illegally caught and hunted. This ornithologist says that he can tell all European birds apart, but there’s no way he can recognize the thousands of species of exotic birds, only 58 of which are protected by the CITES convention.

“Each bird in a shipment which arrives from Africa must have the proper papers. But will the guys who check on a shipment at two o’clock in the morning at the Belgrade airport know how to recognize the species?” he asks. “Two birds may be very similar, yet while one of them may be critically endangered, the other may be legal.”

“Traders will always claim that the birds have been bred in captivity. But this is not true—they are stolen from nests. Especially the African gray parrot. Someone in Africa may have captured it for five dollars, in Serbia it is worth five hundred, and in western Europe it goes for three times that,” says Ružić.

There is practically no way from Serbia to export birds to the EU, except by smuggling, he says. “I think this is major organized crime which involves people in high positions. My sources always tell me about people in the top ranks of the police and army.”

BIRDS ARE DISAPPEARING MYSTERIOUSLY FROM SERBIA

At the Belgrade zoo, parrots and large toucans are squawking. Some of them were impounded from smugglers and now, as part of the zoo’s exhibit, they are “working” for their food, as Kristian Ovari, a zoo biologist tells us. 

Other impounded animals are not on display, but the zoo takes care of them until they come up with a solution. In Serbia there is no asylum for exotic animals so the police and inspection send them to zoos, mostly to Belgrade and Palić.

“Sometimes half of the smuggled animals die. The smugglers pack them in densely, with no water, which is highly stressful,” says Ovari. If they arrive alive, they are often a challenge for the zoo. “We cannot release species which are not from here into the wild.”

The zoo at Kalemegdan is overcrowded, there is not enough room even for the animals which are part of the exhibit. Recently it was announced that within two or three years the zoo will be moved from its cult location at the fortress to Adu Safari. Perhaps then they will finally qualify to join the European Association of Zoos.

Ovari, who has worked for years on Palić, knows about the smuggling route. “The border controls are not that strict. You can have anything in the trunk of your car and your chances are not less than fifty percent that you’ll be able to bring it into Hungary.” 

“Tens of thousands of animals, including the African gray parrot, come into Serbia. And then they disappear,” Ovari went on. “I assume that they leave Serbia. They are valuable genetic material for the EU market.”

Halid Redža Akan’s telephone rings, and the Zemun trader leaves to take someone 2.5 kilograms of birdfood. Then in his backyard he shows us his favorite, his star: Koki. The big white cockatoo has already acted in advertisements and films.

With regret, Redža recalls safaris through Tanzania, where he went to see the birds in the wild. Earlier, while this was possible, he procured his gray jacquot parrots from there. But in 2016, because of th loss of wildlife, the government of Tanzania banned the exportation of animals which had brought huge profits. Last June a six-month lifting of the ban was announced to allow traders to empty their warehouses. This was followed by a proper shitstorm, especially on Twitter, and the next day the government withdrew its decision.

RED-CHEEKED CORDONBLEUS AND BLACK HORNBILLS

Redža and other importers from Serbia still do have suppliers in Africa. As this Zemun denizen describes it, birds are ordered from catalogues, and the CITES office issues permits. Redža must hold the birds in quarantine for three weeks and he says that the state veterinarians visit him regularly. “Earlier many birds came from Tanzania, but ever since they shut down exports, it’s been Guinea and Mali,” he said.

Although the Belgrade CITES office didn’t provide data on who was importing and how many birds, Vreme accessed to a detailed list of imports from Guinea. Over the last three years, 35,618 birds have arrived in Serbia from there—a sixth of Guinea’s exports. Almost all the birds were sent to two addresses: a trader in Batajnica and one in Subotica, which uses two different companies at the same address.

Among others, thousands of of red-cheeked cordonbleus and Jameson’s firefinches, miniature birds weighing roughly ten grams each, but also several larger Senegalese stone curlews and black hornbills.

They all end up on Turkish Airlines flights. The airline refused to respond to questions from journalists. When we introduced ourselves as potential importers of birds and requested information about prices, the airlines stated that transport of wooden crates up to 30 kilograms costs $550 between the Guinean capital, Conakry, and Belgrade. And this is regardless of the number of birds. Each additional kilo costs another $15.00.

The US organization, World Animal Protection, published the results of an investigation in 2019 according to which Turkish Arlines was transporting to Asia endangered Africa gray parrots from the People’s Republic of Congo, Mali and Nigeria. The organization declared the Turkish air carrier to be “the poacher’s airline of choice.”

BIRDS COST FIFTY TIMES MORE IN EUROPE

Belgrade is fifty thousand kilometers from Conakry, a port city on the Atlantic Ocean. There was a military coup here in September 2021 and now the country is being governed by Lieutenant Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, a former member of the French Foreign Legion. Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world, and the birds from the tropical virgin forests and savannahs mean money.

One trader met us in a Lebanese bakery in the bustling buisness quarter of Conakry. People with deep pockets congregate there, and on offer are birthday cakes, espresso and croissants.

Conakry is not an inexpensive city, although it is overcrowded with the poor—in front of the bakery there are beggars, hucksters selling cigarettes while jampacked minibuses wind through the streets, serving as taxis and haulers. On their roofs sway goods for the port, from pineapples and coffee to bauxite.

A trader, who didn’t wish us to give his name, exports many finches to Serbia. They capture the birds in the wild. “We have many,” he says about Mozambique siskins, which are sold for $1.50 per bird. In the Dutch pet shops this little yellow finch is sold for €75—the journey is long and there are many hands and much profit at play.

He rebuffs accusations that his business is harming the environment. “The population of birds is dwindling due to deforestation. They’re cutting trees and building. Where I live, there used to be a forest where we caught birds, but today it’s a city,” he says.

“Some farmers spray pesticides on their crops, rice. They say that we traders are destroying the birds, but this is not true—they are poisoning the rice, and the birds are dying from it. We take them alive and follow established quotas. And we export them to experts. We are not murderers,” said the man.

But there are those who doubt that the shipments to Europe contain only birds which can be legally sent. Bella Diallo, a retired Guinean CITES officer in Conakry, says that songbirds ought to be more protected than they are.

“We always have had problems at the airport,” he tells us. “We can see the certificates of origin but the people at the airport and at customs are not specialists. The traders can pack any bird they want into the crates and send it.”

THEY HAVE KALASHNIKOVS, THEY HAVE NO FUEL

The person who should put a stop to this is Pierre Kamano, the commander of Guinea’s National Brigade for the Fight agaisnt Crime in Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. Theirs is not an innocent inspection; they are a group of elite soldiers with kalashnikovs. In Kamano’s office, at the Ministry of the Environment, there is a large photograph of him on the wall with President Dounbouya. Both are in uniform, and the president is wearing sunglasses.

“It is very difficult to protect our nature,” says Kamano. “We are doing what we can to repress environmental crime, but these criminals are very sly, they are organized and have a lot of money.”

Kamano’s unit does what they can with what little they have at their disposal. He says, the animal species in Guinea can still be saved, but it would help if the unit were more mobile. They have only six vehicles for patrolling the vast country—and these were donated by the EU. Their fuel is sometimes paid for by a French non-profit organization.

Guinea has a surface area three times that of Serbia, but only every third road is paved. It takes two days of driving over rugged terrain to reach the national park along the upper course of the River Niger. When the rainy season arrives, the drive takes even longer. This park, aside from rare birds, is home to chimpanzees, hippopotamuses, elephants.

Traders involved in crime can still sleep peacefully. When we asked the trader we spoke with at the bakery why the African birds are selling so well, he said: “I don’t know. You’re the ones buying. Ask your families in Europe.”

THE GAME GOES ON

Demand is not flagging in Europe. Though Dutch inspector Harald Garretsen does prevail, now and then, in his battles with the windmills. His patrol at the bird market in ‘s–Hertogenbosch last September—was his last at that location.

“Regrettably, we have concluded that it is no longer financially feasible to organize yet another bird fair like AviMarkt,” announced the organizers in late January. “We are expecting far fewer visitors and exhibitors because of the European Animal Health Regulation. AviMarkt is interesting as an exhibition precisely because of its international character.”

“This is why we decided to stop while we’re at our peak,” the announcement read. “It is not desirable for exhibitor and visitors as well as for us, if birds are impounded or fines meted because we cannot meet certain requirements.”

The new European regulations were adopted in 2021, but the Dutch allowed for a grace period for all concerned that lasted until the end of last year. Since then, special attention has been paid to diseases which can be transmitted to humans, such as the avian flu. This means that birds must have verterinary certificatse—which complicates the work of smugglers.

But there is no doubt that the game goes on as long as millions of people really do enjoy listening to colorful birds chirping in their rooms and gardens. Demand will give rise to supply, the smuggling routes are well-traveled. Many officials are bribed to look away. It’s only the small fry that are caught.

“The ones who are most often arrested are those involved in transport and in capturing the animals in the wild,” says Chris Shepherd from an international society for the study and protection of wild species, reminding us of the rule of every smuggler. “People who are well networked and run the whole operation will never be arrested. And the final buyer is seldom arrested, because everything is handled at the destination to make it look as if the birds are legal. It’s difficult to prove that they aren’t.”

 

 

Framed text: The convention is hardly perfect.

Why can little finches be legally experted from Guinea to Serbia, but African gray parrots cannot? Because the former, or so it is believed, are abudnant in nature, while the latter are facing extinction.

But things are not so simple. If a species is to be “officially” registered as threatened, it must be listed in the annexes of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The convention, known as the Washington agreement, was adopted in the capital city of the United States in 1973. Today almost all the members of the United Nations are signatories of this convention.

A total of about 6,000 animal and 33,000 plant species are under some degree of protection from CITES.

Annex 1 lists protected species “such as polar bears.” These are, for instance, the red panda, the Asian elephant, the chimpanzee and the tiger. The African gray parrot is also listed here. Capture and sale of wild specimens is prohibited, scientists being a possible exception who require specimens for research.

Annex 2 lists a much larger number of species that are supposedly not threatened with extinction, yet sale is limited and requires special permits. Annex 3 lists species which are considered endangered in at least one of the countries that signed the convention.

The meetings of convention members are fraught with politics. So the bluefin tuna, though critically threatened, is not listed in the CITES annexes because Japan is adamantly opposed to this, and their opposition mobilizes the support of all the countries they are involved with or to whom they send aid for development. Japan imports 80 percent of the catch of this tuna, which is especially prized there.

Chris Shepherd, executive director of the Monitor Conservation Research Society, has similar criticism regarding the African birds. He says there is not enough field research conducted on the songbirds and population counts are lacking so they are not considered endangered, though they probably are.

 “Plus few people care about songbirds,” said Shepherd. People are more concerned about rhinoceroses or primates. Of the 6,000 known species of songbirds, only 58 of them are protected.

As birds aren’t protected by CITES, they can be freely caught in African countries and exported. “Trade is a key factor when we’re dealing with protecting the African species of parrot,” Rowan Martin told Vreme. Martin is an expert on Africa at the World Parrot Trust. “There is still significant legal trade with African parrots, and a very significant illegal trade.”

As he says, one of the lies espoused by the breeder lobbies is that by breeding the birds in captivity they are preserving the population of wild parrots. But this is not the case, says Martin, because the breeders always need fresh blood. “This can make things much worse.”

According to experts, we are now experiencing the sixth wave of mass extinction. “Removal of any species from its natural habitat has consequences. This is like pulling bricks out from out under the ground floor of a large building—if you pull out one, nothing happens, but if you keep it up, everything will collapse,” says Shepherd.

“Capturing birds has an impact on everything that feeds on them and that they feed on, many disperse seeds or keep the insect population under control. But, who knows what the long-term consequences will be,” he added.