Massive wild bird seizures reflect soaring pressure on Sumatran birds

07/12/2018

The seizure of over 8,000 birds in three incidents over a 10-day period highlights the large-scale extraction of birds from the wilds of Sumatra in order to feed Indonesia's chronic and unsustainable demand for caged birds.

All the birds confiscated by Indonesia's Agricultural Quarantine Agency had originated from Sumatra and were destined for sale in Java, which is home to the largest bird markets in South-East Asia and supports a thriving illegal trade in wild-caught songbirds.

On 27 November, Cilegon quarantine officers working with Indonesian NGO, FLIGHT, seized 2,140 birds found on a truck at Merak port on the north-west tip of Java. 

Just 10 days prior, the same quarantine office confiscated 4,851 birds packed into boxes from a truck in Kota Serang, the westernmost province on Java. The consignment originated in Lampung, a province in the southernmost tip of Sumatra, and was headed for several locations in Java.

In operations from 21-23 November, Bandar Lampung quarantine officers seized a further 1,536 birds, which had been stuffed into dozens of plastic crates in the luggage compartment of a bus at Bakauheni Port in southern Sumatra.

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Camera trap records nearly extinct cuckoo bird in Sumatra

by Basten Gokkon on 27 September 2017

A camera trap captured the Sumatran ground cuckoo in a national park.

The discovery of the avian species indicated that the park might be one of its last refuges.

The park agency said it would investigate the finding to make a conservation strategy for the cuckoo.

Park rangers in Indonesia said this week that they had photographed the nearly extinct Sumatran ground cuckoo (Carpococcyx viridis) for the first time in a protected area in North Sumatra, the first time in 10 years that anyone has caught a glimpse of it.

A camera trap in Batang Gadis National Park first captured the cuckoo last November at roughly 8.30 a.m., followed by another picture of the bird snapped about an hour later.

Based on the recorded images, park officials and experts from Conservation International (CI), an NGO, identified the sighted bird as the Sumatran ground cuckoo, which is listed as Critically Endangered by the IUCN.

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The Hornbill Hunters of Sumatra

Posted on August 1, 2017By Gregory McCann

Slaughter of magnificent birds in a contradictory culture

In 2011, a Taiwanese businessman named Hsien arrived in Indonesia with a plan to make himself rich and in the process to systematically wipe out one of the world’s most majestic and rarest birds, the helmeted hornbill, Rhinoplax vigil, also known as the “King Hornbill”  in the provinces of Kalimantan and Sumatra.

He has made considerable progress. According to an article on the website Borneo Features titled “Planning a Path to Perdition,” middlemen were recruited to put out the word that there was someone willing to pay US$10 for the head of one helmeted hornbill. Over the next year, according to the article, the middlemen hired a network of people using cars, buses, motorcycles and boats, heading up the great rivers of Borneo, the Barito, Mahakam, Kapuas. In the interior of this vast island, they spent time talking to villagers, telling them they would come every three months to collect, and leaving their telephone numbers, no questions asked.” “I will come here every three months to collect.” “This is my phone number. You can call me if you have a good stock ready for collection, say at least 50 heads.”

Prices have skyrocketed since then, and the organized network of villagers hunting Helmeted Hornbills has expanded throughout all of Sumatra as well as Peninsular Malaysia and Southern Thailand—the entire range for the species.

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