B.C. BIRD REFUGE RESCUES HOMELESS PETS

By CINDA CHAVICH

(Coombs, B.C.) - Max sits in the corner crooning I left My Heart in San Francisco.

Ginny self-mutiliates – ripping out her own iridescent green and orange feathers like the addicts in the crack house where she was rescued. Peaches lost a wing but seems to have the run of the special needs unit, toddling around on her pigeon toes and chatting up anyone within ear shot.

Welcome to The World Parrot Refuge, an educational facility in tiny Coombs, B.C. where Wendy Huntbatch and her non-profit For the Love of Parrots Rescue Society (FLOPRS) provides “a home for life” for more than 500 abandoned and homeless birds. It’s a unique facility, and the largest parrot refuge in the country, where an ever-growing population of unwanted pet parrots come to live, and die, and where Huntbatch is waging a one-woman war on the buying and selling of exotic birds.

“There has been an alarming increase in the number of displaced and unwanted birds in recent years,” she says. “because people have no idea how much time and energy it takes to care for these exotic, wild animals.”

What seems like a quirky story on the surface – a well-meaning and slightly eccentric red head with a penchant for homeless parrots – turns out to be just the final chapter in a sad tale of international scope. Parrots (a.k.a. cockatoos, cockatiels, macaws and other exotic psittacines) are the hottest new pet for busy urbanites. In the U.S. alone, the number of pet birds quadrupled in the 1990s, to more than 40 million by some industry estimates.

With individual birds selling for up to $15,000, the trafficking of wild birds is on the increase, too, a major part of the estimated $10-$20 billion international exotic wildlife trade, and according to the World Wildlife Fund, 94 of the world’s 330 parrot species are now threatened with extinction.

Yet despite an EU ban on importation of wild-caught birds which came into effect July 1 – a move triggered by fears of the spread of avian influenza – and a similar ban in the U.S., Canada continues to allow wild parrots to be imported as pets.

At the World Parrot Refuge, an educational facility open to tourists and school groups, the sad and graphic stories of the 500+ feathered residents are told through interpretive panels and video tapes. The over riding message is this: parrots are wild animals that deserve freedom, not caging as pets, and buying exotic birds threatens species in the wild.

Yet bird sales continue to grow by an estimated five per cent each year.

Why do so many people buy birds? Status, style and the misguided belief that a parrot is happy to live its life in a cage, and is therefore a low-maintenance pet. Nothing can be further from the truth, says Huntbatch, mixing up a batch of exotic bird feed, one of the refuge’s largest expenses.

“It costs a quarter million dollars a year to operate this place even with all of our volunteers,” she says. “Labour is the most expensive, but the food is also an issue. We have seven different seed diets, three nut diets and a variety of fruits and vegetables. Every three weeks we buy 750 pounds of nuts.”

Many bird owners discover far too late, usually when their neighbors sign a petition and their landlord complains, that birds are naturally extremely noisy and demanding. And unless you have the space to give them a life that mimics their wild habitat, and the time to devote to their care, parrots can become neurotic and extremely destructive. They can even be considered dangerous – unpredictable, and able to lop off fingers with their strong beaks.

Most people would never imagine, when they’re laying out $1,500 for that cuddly little cockatoo at the pet shop, that their precious parrot may end up here - or worse, abandoned to the never-ending purgatory of the buy-and-sell.

When that clever little chatterbox begins shredding the leather loveseat and shrieking all day long, many families simply give up on their feathered friends. Add to that the fact that most parrots will live between 40 and 90 years, even the most committed caretakers eventually must part with their parrots.

Ergo, many pet parrots end up on the resale merry-go-round, passed from owner to owner, often neglected and abused, like a difficult kid in the foster care system.

Since most animal shelters designed for cats and dogs are not able to care for birds, unwanted parrots end up with small volunteer rescue groups or in foster homes, to be re-adopted, but often not permanently.

“They can be helpful in providing a much improved home for a parrot, but generally speaking these birds end up back on the pet go around in a few years,” says Huntbatch. “We have received quite a number of parrots that have been adopted from rescue organizations and have outlived their magical presence.”

According to bird experts, the “parrot displacement problem” (the plight of homeless parrots) is reaching epidemic proportions yet there are fewer places for unwanted parrots to land. Across Canada, two bird rescue organizations have folded this year due to lack of funds and volunteers, including Chaotic Exotics in Calgary and Wings of Hope, an Ontario-based parrot rescue group that had been operating for 13 years.

Inside the huge metal-clad buildings that make up the World Parrot Refuge, birds are separated by species into colourful flocks. With it’s large indoor aviaries, each 90 feet long and filled with sculptural wooden perches, the refuge gives these intelligent birds a place to live in groups, as they do in nature, space to fly, healthy food, and care by knowledgeable staff and volunteers.

Kids cover their ears as a pastel sulphur-crested cockatoo leaps along the chain link enclosure, shrieking and displaying its fan of golden head feathers. Huntbatch coos to Ester, a talkative bird being treated for cancer, and balances a massive blue macaw on her outstretched arm, it’s iridescent tail feathers almost grazing the ground.

Even extremely stressed and abused birds, some plucked almost naked when they arrive, can recover and lead a “normal” life here among the security of the flock, with proper food and medical care, she says.

Sadly, the parrots that do survive here as pets are often scooped from the wild by poachers in the poorest regions of southeast Asia and South America. After guns and drugs, exotic wildlife is the world’s largest illegal trafficking problem.

Parrots, or psittacines, are found in tropical or semi-tropical regions around the globe, according to the Worldwatch Institute, nearly one-third of the world’s 330 parrot species are threatened with extinction as a result of habitat destruction and pressures from the pet trade.

The Species Survival Network, a global coalition of wildlife conservation groups, says more than 40,000 wild Senegal parrots enter the international pet trade each year despite the fact that CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) prohibits trade in over 40 species. The yellow-crested Cockatoo of East Timor and Indonesia is close to extinction as a result of trapping and poaching for the pet trade, and the Spix’s Macaw of Brazil is already extinct in the wild. The popular African Grey Parrot is also a threatened species, and in Bolivia, the endangered red-fronted Macaw is protected under a new conservation program.

It’s a pet industry myth, says Huntbatch, that hand-raised baby birds are tame or bond better with humans, because parrots are not domesticated animals. Only the lucky ones make it through the pet trade system to loving homes or safe havens like the World Parrot Refuge.

The goal of the refuge, Huntbatch says, is to educate the public about the problems facing both wild and pet parrots. It costs about $500 per year to house one parrot here and the non-profit group is always looking for new ways to keep the refuge operating, from food and used toy drives, to “virtual adoption” schemes.

For now, they’re getting by on a wing and a prayer.

www.worldparrotrefuge.org

(This story first appeared in the Toronto Globe and Mail)

©Cinda Chavich 2007

www.tastereport.com