But imagine if today’s bird watchers encountered people climbing trees with nets in their hands, hunting down and snaring large flocks of North American blue jays or cardinals. What if they witnessed baby red-tailed hawks being robbed from their nests and stuffed into knapsacks? Worst of all, what if they learned that these beautiful creatures were being shipped to foreign countries to be peddled in storefronts and marketed as “caged birds” from America. Surely, they would be outraged. It would be a birder’s hell.

Yet, this scenario plays out every day in the lives of birds in South America, Africa and Indonesia, as countless thousands are hunted down and torn from their families in the wild, only to suffer at the hands of poachers and animal traffickers for the illegal and legal global trade in parrots and other exotic birds.

Twelve percent of the world’s birds are facing extinction and parrots are among the most at risk. A paper published by the Worldwatch Institute, “The Plight of Birds,” (http://www.worldwatch.org/node/518) revealed that “almost a third of the world’s 330 parrot species are threatened with extinction due to pressures from collecting for the pet trade, combined with habitat loss.” Most birds don’t even survive the shock of capture and transport. Experts estimate that 60 percent of birds die before reaching international destinations. To compensate for mortalities, up to four times as many birds are captured than make it to market.