Confounding Rules Can Hinder Conservation: Disparities in Law Regulation on Domestic and International Parrot Trade within and among Neotropical Countries

Abstract

Wildlife trade is a major driver of biodiversity loss worldwide. To regulate its impact, laws and regulations have been implemented at the international and national scales. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) has regulated the international legal trade since 1975. However, an important volume of illegal trade—mainly within countries—continues to threaten several vertebrate groups, which could be due to a lack of specific legislation or enforcement of existing regulations. Our aim was to gain a more accurate picture of poaching and legal possession of native parrots as pets in the Neotropics, where illegal domestic trade is currently widespread. We conducted a systematic search of the laws of each of the 50 countries and overseas territories, taking into account their year of implementation and whether the capture, possession and/or sale of parrots is permitted. We compared this information with legal exports reported by CITES to assess differences between the enforcement of international and national trade regulations. We found that only two countries (Guyana and Suriname) currently allow the capture, trade and possession of native parrots, while Peru allowed international legal trade until recently. The other countries have banned parrot trade from years to decades ago. However, the timing of implementation of international and national trade regulations varied greatly between countries, with half of them continuing to export parrots legally years or decades after banning domestic trade. The confusion created by this complex legal system may have hindered the adoption of conservation measures, allowing poaching, keeping and trade of protected species within and between neighboring countries. Most countries legally exported Neotropical parrot species which were not native to those countries, indicating that trans-border smuggling often occurred between neighboring countries prior to their legal exportations, and that this illicit activity continues for the domestic trade. Governments are urged to effectively implement current legislation that prohibits the trapping and domestic trade of native parrots, but also to develop coordinated alliances and efforts to halt illegal trade among them. Otherwise, illegal trade will continue to erode the already threatened populations of a large number of parrot species across the Neotropics.

Poaching sources and trade routes in Peru and Ecuador warn of the unsustainable rural demand for preferred parrot species

“…Marsden & Royle, 2015;Tella et al, 2021). Following Romero-Vidal et al (2020), we choose roadside surveys since this methodology allows to sample very large areas to increase the likelihood of recording parrots showing low densities and/or patchy distributions (Dénes et al, 2018;Tella et al, 2021). Using this methodology, the number of individuals recorded strongly correlates (r = .93) with density estimates accounting for differences in detectability among species (i.e., through distance-sampling modeling), and allows the calculation of relative species-specific abundances (individuals/km) for whole parrot communities, including the scarcer species that yield insufficient encounters for modeling detectability (see further details, strengths, and weakness of this method in Tella et al, 2021).…”

“…Moreover, these figures surely underestimate the actual extraction rates, as they do not account for the high mortality during capture, transport, and captivity before and after selling wildcaught birds (Baños-Villalba et al, 2021;Gonz alez, 2003) neither for the high percentage of poached parrots that remains undetected during surveys (Gastañaga et al, 2011). Furthermore, these surveys were mostly restricted to markets located in large cities and thus field studies aimed at estimating the number of parrots removed for self-supply or sold by poachers on a more local scale in rural areas, which could largely outnumber parrots sold in city markets (Romero-Vidal et al, 2020), are needed (S anchez-Mercado et al, 2021).…”

“…For transported individuals, we reconstructed trade routes through the available grid of roads. Attending to the selective poaching hypothesis (Romero-Vidal et al, 2020;Tella & Hiraldo, 2014), we predicted that: (1) parrot poaching is not random but directed toward the most preferred species, mainly amazons and large macaws, (2) the most preferred species are transported at greater distances, even far from their distribution ranges and markets, and (3) are more valuable and thus more expensive. Finally, if selective poaching and transport act at large spatial scales, (4) preferred species should have negative population trends that might reflect a more concerning global conservation status (Tella & Hiraldo, 2014).…”

Wildlife Crime: Issues and Promising Solutions

“…However, the laws and regulations regarding the legal and illegal aspects of this trade are often confusing and contradicting between national and international levels. Romero-Vidal et al [ 8 ] made the first attempt to disentangle such regulations regarding the domestic and international wildlife trade in Neotropical countries, specifically focusing on the trade and possession of parrots. They found that among 46 Neotropical countries/territories with native parrot populations, only Suriname and Guyana currently allow the capture, trade, and possession of these parrots, while Suriname, Guyana, and Peru also allow legal international trade.…”

The dark web trades wildlife, but mostly for use as drugs

“…Given the risks associated with wildlife trade, many traded taxa are regulated to prevent population declines and extinctions, where the primary regulatory body for international wildlife trade is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES, 2023). While individual countries have their own domestic policies for wildlife trade occurring within their borders, not all wildlife trade is regulated (Romero‐Vidal et al, 2022). In terms of international trade, less than 10% of all known plant and terrestrial vertebrate species, and less than 1% of all known fish and invertebrate species, are listed on CITES.…”