by Basten Gokkon on 7
September 2018
The
Indonesian government has removed three popular songbirds from its newly
updated list of protected species. They are the white-rumped shama,
straw-headed bulbul and Javan pied starling — a critically endangered species.
The move
comes amid protests from songbird owners and breeders, who have raised concerns
about loss of livelihoods.
The
owners and breeders now say they will push for more species to be removed from
the list.
Conservationists
and scientists have blasted the ministry for backing down and called into
question its assessment that protecting the three species would have had an
adverse economic impact.
JAKARTA —
The Indonesian government has dropped three popular songbirds from a new list
of protected species, amid pressure from owners and breeders.
The
white-rumped shama (Kittacincla malabarica), the Javan pied starling (Gracupica
jalla) and the straw-headed bulbul (Pycnonotus zeylanicus) — the latter two of
which are listed as threatened on the IUCN Red List — will no longer be
protected from captive breeding and trading by private owners.
The three
were among 562 bird species named in a sweeping
update of the government’s list of protected species, out of a
total of 919 species. The announcement in June of the update, the first in
nearly two decades, was met
with protests by songbird owners and breeders. They argued that the
ban on buying and selling commonly traded songbirds lacked scientific and
cultural bases. They also said several species included in the update were
currently bred on a large scale, and were far from endangered.
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