Illegal trade in melodious
Straw-headed Bulbul driving populations to critically low levels
The beautiful, melodious song of
the Straw-headed Bulbul may very well be its downfall, as trapping for the
Indonesian songbird trade is driving populations to critically low levels.
A newly-published journal paper
in Bird Conservation International The final straw? An overview of Straw-headed
Bulbul Pycnonotus zeylanicus trade in Indonesia" shows
that the species is still very much in demand for the songbird trade.
Market inventories in Kalimantan
and Java between July 2014 and June 2015 recorded a total of 71 individuals in
11 markets in eight cities; this includes five birds that were kept as pets and
were not for sale. Comparing this against historical literature, researchers
found that as numbers in markets decreased, prices soared to over 20 times
those recorded in 1987. This availability-to-price relationship suggests that
the inflation in prices is linked directly to the rarity of the birds in the
wild.
The Straw-headed Bulbul’s IUCN Red
List conservation status was revised from Vulnerable to
Endangered in 2015, but the authors believe that a Critically Endangered status
more accurately reflects the situation.
"Just 71 animals over a year
seems miniscule when compared to tens of thousands of birds traded in the
Indonesian market. However, each animal taken is one too many for a rare
species that has disappeared from most of its original range, and whose
survival is now hanging by a thread," said Kanitha Krishnasamy, Acting
Regional Director for Southeast Asia.
The species has most likely
vanished from Myanmar, Thailand and Java, but small pockets remain in Sumatra,
where there has been only one recent reported sighting since 2009. Populations
in Borneo and Peninsular Malaysia have also greatly declined.
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