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Bird Trafficking in Mexico

by Manuel Grosselet

Late in night, I write these lines.

Today, I was invited as bird identification expert by the Wildlife Law enforcement to visit a market close to Toluca, State of Mexico.

The goal of this visit was to check the bird sellers. We found 8 differents sellers. And we took away around 200 birds. Ilegals. No identification tag, no permit, fordidden species. Some of these sellers should go to the jail, to possess one endangered Species, Brown-backed Solitaire. Two years ago, when I worked in the Wildlife Division in charge of all bird harvesting permits, I prohibited the taking of this species.

Mexico has two kinds of harvesting, subsitence and through UMA (Unidad de Manejo Ambiental). The idea is to have a piece of land, and ask to collect x number of birds based on surveys of local populations. The result is that this harvesting should be sustainable. It's fairly rare when it's really sustainable.

These people that we check today were below the subsistence permit. Normally, with poor people, the government gives them each year a variable number of birds—around 250 per person. But, the price between the first bird trapper and the fisrt seller is between 0.5 to 15 pesos (0.05 – White collared Seedeater and Blue black Grassquit to 1.3 Usd – Male Painted Bunting, Male Northern Cardinal and Green Jay – per bird). And for sure the people need to capture more than 250 birds to earn something. After talking with some local birds trappers, I found out that they caught in general around 2000 birds per season per trapper. The Wildlife Division in Mexico City has around one thousand trappers registered, but we know that the true number of trappers is more around 15000 to 18000 in México. So, I let you imagine the number of birds, annually, that the Mexican bird trappers take out of nature. It's probably around 10,000,000 birds. Wild birds, residents as well as migrants.

Today the most common caged bird that we found was Painted Bunting. All were illegal, and may total around 50 birds, just in this place. How many birds were dead before we found them, we don't know.

The bird list today was something interesting. The non-permitted species were Grasshopper Sparrow (2), Chipping Sparrow (around 20), Chipping Sparrows painted orange on the back and head (2), amd White-throated Robin (2). The others were Painted, Indigo, and Orange-breasted Bunting, Cardinal, House Finch, Starlings, Cedar Waxwings, Blue and Black-headed Grosbeak, Gray Silky, Brown-backed Solitaire, Blue Bunting, Lesser Goldfinch, Rufous-backed Robin, Phainopepla, Scott's, Black-backed and Altamira Orioles, Green Jay, Curve-billed Thrasher, Red Legged Honeycreeper, Slate-color Solitaire and Northern Mockingbird.

All of these were confiscated and tomorrow one of the sellers will go before the justice, the other seller will be fined and have their permit canceled (if they have one).

So, fairly soon I will be back at another spot. For me, it's risky activity and the anger of some sellers is fairly strong.

Manuel Grosselet
Field Ornithologist

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