Bird smuggling second only to drug smuggling

Theresia Sufa, Bogor

A wildlife watchdog has revealed that bird smuggling is the second largest crime in the country after drug trafficking in terms of the number of cases.

Executive of the Bogor-based Network Development Birdlife Indonesia Yusup Cahyadin told The Jakarta Post on Monday the most popular birds are cockatoos and parrots, which are smuggled overseas from Tobelo Halmahera district, North Maluku.

"The birds are taken directly off the island by fishing boats from Singapore and the Philippines. The Eastern Naval Fleet has been unable to curb the crime, maybe because their surveillance area is too vast," he said.

Yusup, who has been working in the island district for many years, further said that locals captured the birds by order from their natural habitat in the forest.

"In return, the locals are paid with soap or liquors."

A cockatoo sells for Rp 15,000 (US$1.67) to Rp 20,000 on the domestic market, but, according to Yusup, it can go for up to $1,000 in foreign markets.

Yusup said some birds were smuggled as air cargo, but this method was more costly because the birds have to be rendered unconscious before they are each packed in a bottle.

It is suspected that organized smuggling networks in Singapore and the Philippines prepare the appropriate documents to export the birds to destination markets in European countries, and the government has been trying to enlist the neighboring countries' participation in the battle against the smuggling of protected wildlife.

Next month, the Directorate for Conservation and Biodiversity of the office of the State Minister of the Environment will hold a bilateral dialog on bird smuggling with the Filipino government and NGOs.

There are 14 types of protected cockatoos, including the great sulfur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galleria) and sulfur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua sulphurea), white-colored goffin (Cacatua goffini) and salmon-crested cockatoo (Cacatua molucensis), all of which are indigenous to the islands of eastern Indonesia, including Maluku.

Protected parrot species include red-and-blue lorry (Eos histrio), yellow-backed lorry (Lorius eclectus/roratus), black- capped lorry (Lorius lory) and black-lored parrot (Tanygnathus Sumatranus).

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Flora and Fauna stipulates that protected avian species can be traded only if they originated from breeding facilities, not directly from nature.

While Law No. 5/1999 on conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem, traders and owners of protected animals face up to five years in jail and/or a Rp 100 million (US$11,200) fine, the law has not been stringently enforced, and endangered bird and animal species can be seen on display openly at street-side markets in the capital and other major cities.