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From: kdb@intercon.com (Kurt Baumann)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Importing parrots for genetic variability
Message-ID: <28577E6E.68B8@intercon.com>
Date: 13 Jun 91 14:17:17 GMT
References: <1991Jun12.131020.22423@zoo.toronto.edu>
Sender: usenet@intercon.com (USENET The Magnificent)
Reply-To: kdb@intercon.com (Kurt Baumann)
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In article <1991Jun12.131020.22423@zoo.toronto.edu>, rising@zoo.toronto.edu 
(Jim Rising) writes:
> I'm not saying that genetic variation isn't "a good thing,"
> but if your parrots are always sickly maybe it has something to do
> with their captive situation (the food, or what have you).  This
> does not strike me as an obvious a priori argument to capture wild 
> birds the enhance the captive breeding populations.  At least,

Obviously not written by anyone who has every breed birds.  Look, the situation 
is that the bigger the gene pool the better.  If for example we bring in 400 
pairs of Moluccan Cockatoos and over 5 years (it takes on average about 4-5 
years to get a wild caught pair to breed) only 50 pairs produce chicks, then we 
obviously end up with a gene pool only consisting of those 50 pairs.  The way 
things are working now those other 350 pairs may never breed.  The reasons for 
why there is not a good rate are many, and not entirely understood.  (More 
field research is needed, but there is no time..)

But if for example every 2 years another 100 pairs were brought in and checked 
for health (better than what is currently done), NOT medicated out the wazoo, 
and in general treated better (perhaps 1 or two pairs per crate instead of the 
50-100 birds per crate now (which is only one reason why I am against continued 
imports of birds).  I believe that this would bring up the production rate, and 
would in the long run relieve the threat that some of these species are under.

As an aside, to successfully breed, you need to be feeding the absolute best 
diet that science knows about for parrots.  So sickly chicks have little to do 
with food.  Parrots will not breed in close quarters, they need room.  So their 
situation has little to do with sickly chicks.  Those factors have to do with 
sickly pairs, and good breeders do what is needed in order to insure that their 
birds are not only healthy, but have what they need to produce.  After all most 
of these breeders have several thousands of dollars invested, not only in the 
birds themselves, but also in their facilities.

The plan that I would like to see and am going to work for is basically:

1. Stop imports for the pet trade. Period.

2. Allow imports of birds for "certified" breeding centers, not just Zoo's.  
Zoo's have their place but they are mainly for people to go see animals at.  
Breeding Parrots just don't really work when people are streaming by (like at 
the National Zoo in DC where they have been trying to breed endangered Black 
Palms for the last several years in a small cage with people snapping flash 
pictures at them).  It just doesn't work.

3. Lobby all countries who now allow no exports of Parrots to open up slightly 
for exporting birds to breeding centers around the world.  Perhaps with some 
sort of pay back by getting young birds to release into the wild.
 
Obviously this all takes money to manage.  That's why you would also need some 
way of generating income from the birds brought into the country.  Breeders for 
the most part would be more than willing to pay extra for pairs if they knew 
that they had been WELL taken care of on the way into the country.  Money can 
be generate from this and from the sales of domestic breed baby birds.

This solution is not complete, but it is better than just cutting off the 
imports of birds that will either die off entirely or be smuggled in anyway.  
The buying public is just not aware of what is going on either.

> let's get some input from geneticists about how best to do this
> before we jump on that bandwagon:  how many new birds are needed
> to achieve the desired effect?  what is the desired effect? how do
> we best breed the birds?  etc?  Weren't all present domestic hamsters
> descended from a single gravid female?  Is our goal to have "healthy
> and happy pets" or to preserve genetic variation in wild populations?
> (I realize that there may soon be no wild populations of some of these
> species.)

The goal as I see it is both.  We need to have healthy domestic pets to deal 
with the demand that is being put on the wild populations, but we also need to 
provide essentially a Noah's Ark service for those species going out of 
existence.  Hamsters breed far to readily and far to often to be equated with 
Parrots.  The youngest most parrots breed is at about 5 years of age, with most 
older than that.  If you start running averages, and numbers out into the 
future you see that within about 10 years not only will the wild population be 
gone for the most part, but the growth of the domestic population will fall 
off.  New pairs setup today will not produce (on average) until five years from 
now.  There is not enough production of domestic birds today to fullfil demand 
and to save birds back for future production and preservation.

One example that I know is the Rose Breasted Cockatoo from Austrailia.  This 
bird is not endangered, however it does illustrate some of the problems that I 
am talking about.  This bird breeds fairly readily, ask anyone from Austrailia, 
but even so, here in the US, where new birds have not been brought into the 
country since (I think) 1960, there still are not very many breeding pairs.  
After Austrailia cut off exports we were left with whatever was in the coutry 
at the time.  The prices (which is a good indication of how many are available) 
for these birds has remained high $3,500+.  They are just now starting to get 
well established in breeding populations in the US.  Had we been able to get a 
few pairs every so often I think that there would be a larger and more viable 
population of these birds in the US.  There are other species of Austrailian 
birds that have died off in the US becuase of several factors, original 
population size being amoung them.

Anyway I could go on about this for a while, the end picture is that to totally 
cut off imports is sticking our heads in the sand and hoping that the problem 
will go away.  It won't.  The Moluccan Cockatoo is under the dual pressures of 
habitat destruction and wide spread desease, in addition to capture for the pet 
trade.  Unfortunatly for these birds (or fortunatly) part of their continued 
survival as a species rests in the hands of breeders around the world.  I don't 
believe that we can stop ourselves from cutting down every tree in the world 
hence the rainforests will be gone within the next 10 years.  With those gone 
the habitat of these birds is also gone.  Do we help them survive, in the hope 
that we will wake up and start setting aside land as preserves, or do we just 
ignore the problem and go our own way.  We aren't stopping the import of 
rainforest hardwood, oil taken from jungles, paper created with rainforest 
wood, etc...  Yet something that we can help survive, we want to ignore.

I feel that banning the importation of birds for the pet trade is a good idea.  
I don't feel that the ban should be total.


Kurt Baumann                  703.709.9890
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