Colourful songbirds could be traded to extinction

Image source, Rick Stanley/Gabby Salazar

Research shows that songbirds are at high risk of extinction because they are in demand as pets.

Birds with certain colors of their feathers are more likely to be taken from the wild and sold.

Birds in captivity could be used for the trade.

Prof Rebecca Senior said that it wouldn't work for all species. There's a chance that we could shift the source of some pet birds so they're captive-bred.

The songbird trade might be controversial, but these researchers think it could be a way to prevent species from being lost from the wild.

If the most desirable birds were taken from the wild, the populations in Asia's tropical forests would become more drab. The first bird to be lost would be the most striking and unique.

Prof Senior and her colleagues carried out a stocktake of the species in order to understand the threats to wild birds.

She said that species with a different colour are more likely to be traded.

There are two types of colour that are more common in the trade, azure and yellow. It's also common to see pure white.

The most traded species were removed from the wild population. This showed that trapping would result in more brown and less blue birds.

The impact of the trade in Indonesia has been called a conserve crisis. The extinction of species that are threatened by the trade is an issue that the International Union for the Preservation of Nature is trying to address.

In Indonesia, owning songbirds is a way of life. Prizes worth tens of thousands of pounds can be offered in bird- singing contests. Eliminating the trade is pointless according to many environmentalist.

Prof Senior said "rather than go in all guns blazing and say 'you can't take these birds that have been an important part of your culture for so long', we could identify the species that are at risk and try to shift the source to captive bred birds."

There is a high demand for that and there is a possibility for that to be filled.

Image source, Victoria Gill

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