The Sustainability of Keeping Birds as Pets: Should Any Be Kept?

Abstract

We describe a wide range of unethical and unsustainable practices inherent to the trading and keeping of pet birds. At present, biodiversity and wild bird populations are being greatly harmed and many individual birds have poor welfare. Wild-caught birds should not be sold to the public as pets, or to breeding establishments for several reasons, including because 75–90% of wild-caught birds die before the point of sale and taking birds from the wild has negative effects on biodiversity. The housing provided for pet birds should meet the needs of birds of that species and allow good welfare, for example there should be no small cages but aviaries with space for each bird to exercise adequately, and social birds should be kept in social groups. At present, inadequate housing of many pet birds results in stereotypies and other indicators of poor welfare in birds. Owners should have knowledge of how to provide good nutrition and minimize the risk of disease. Unless these changes are made, keeping birds as pets should not be permitted. New laws are needed to prohibit taking birds from the wild and ensure captive pet birds in conditions that do meet their needs.

Conservation implication and traditional ecological knowledge on trading bird: A case study in Depok bird market in Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia

“…Caring for new bird requires a huge effort to provide its food and poses a high risk that the bird gets sick or dies due to its inability to adapt to living in a cage; this risk has an impact on its price. As stated by Peng and Broom (2021), 75-90% of…”

Coping With Human-Cat Interactions Beyond the Limits of Domesticity: Moral Pluralism in the Management of Cats and Wildlife

“…Such domestication of cats, which has been under way for thousands of years (2), is deemed acceptable, even normal, because it does not completely prevent a cat from living a life of its own (3). This is in contrast to what happens, for example, when a recently captured exotic bird from Guatemala or Cameroon, say, is confined to a small cage in a domestic living room or kitchen and is abruptly and permanently cut off from the life it was living in the wild, from its own natural life (4,5).…”

“…The likelihood is, however, that this will be a step too far for most of the people who are the documented owners of the 3.8 million cats now estimated to live in Australian homes (28), including the farmers who still rely on them for pest control. It is not, on its face, a policy that is consistent with the welfare of the animals to be enclosed (4,76). Also, it is an imposition on pet cats and their owners that could almost certainly be avoided if proper steps were taken, with the help of TNR, to reduce the number of cats who pose a threat to biodiversity because they do not live at home.…”

Casting the Net Widely for Change in Animal Welfare: The Plight of Birds in Zoos, Ex Situ Conservation, and Conservation Fieldwork

“…The matter of location of cage and position of perches may appear a negligible matter but it is often pivotal for a bird’s health. Indeed, it is one that might well also affect the health of millions of pet birds [ 6 , 130 , 131 , 132 ].…”