Free Parrots Home / Contact 
Search
submit news and info | web resources | past polls | calendar | advanced search | site statistics | Sound and Video |
 Welcome to Free ParrotsThursday, May 22 2025 @ 10:06 PM UTC 
Amazon Expedition Travel ?
Guyana Expedition Travel

Topics
Home
Travel (9/0)
General News (75/5)
Conservation (50/0)
Shelters and Rescue (13/2)

User Functions
Username:

Password:

Don't have an account yet? Sign up as a New User

Browse All Stories
Browse All Stories

Video About Wild Parrots
click here to purchase

Help support this site!
Help support this site... your donations are needed to support research, conservation, and rescue efforts.


Columbus Zoo Helps 1,000 Endangered African Grey Parrots Confiscated in Cameroon
Friday, February 26 2010 @ 01:24 PM UTC
Contributed by: MikeSchindlinger
Views: 33014
General News Mon, 2/8/2010 - 11:19 AM - By Jennifer M. Wilson

Powell, OH - More than 1,000 endangered African grey parrots were delivered to the Limbe Wildlife Center in Cameroon last week after being confiscated as part of a $1.5 million illegal shipment at the Douala Airport.

The shipment—that was scheduled to be loaded on to Ethiopian Airlines—was the largest on record and is the third major bust of African grey parrots in Cameroon in the past two years. The Last Great Ape Organization (LAGA), in conjunction with Cameroonian law enforcement officials, coordinated the bust. The parrots were destined for Kuwait International Airport and the Bahrain International Airport.

Limbe staff members are scrambling to treat the parrots, many of which are injured or ill. Forty-seven parrots were found dead at the bottom of the crates upon arrival and another 30 did not survive the first day.

“It is crazy,” said Limbe manager Simone de Vries. “It makes you sick to see how the parrots were packed in the boxes, the weaker ones trampled by the strongest.”

read more (307 words)  Email Article To a Friend View Printable Version
Post a comment

Author probes the ways we mistreat parrots
Thursday, November 05 2009 @ 03:43 AM UTC
Contributed by: MikeSchindlinger
Views: 8559
General News PAT MCCOID; pat.mccoid@thenewstribune.com
Published: November 9th, 2008 12:30 AM
Mira Tweti heaps so much praise on parrots in “Of Parrots and People” that readers might want to bring one home. That’s exactly what she hopes to prevent.

Tweti reveals parrots to be human-like in their intelligence, vocabulary skills and social sensibilities – traits that have doomed them to cages for centuries.

But the praise is prelude to 300 pages of investigative journalism aimed at discouraging parrot ownership.

Tweti explains why life in a cage is particularly miserable for parrots. She documents the cruelty of breeding operations and follows firsthand the chain of parrot possession from jungle to living room. It’s not a pretty story.

Parrots, possibly descended from dinosaurs, have the intelligence of a 3- to 5-year-old human. They mate for life, grieve for lost flockmates, defend one another fiercely and bond strongly with humans.

read more (1037 words)  Email Article To a Friend View Printable Version
Post a comment

Birds can Dance!
Friday, May 01 2009 @ 03:12 AM UTC
Contributed by: Paul Brennan
Views: 7493
General News Birds Can Dance, Experts (and Zany Videos) Reveal
Matt Kaplan for National Geographic News
April 30, 2009

His tastes may be sooo ten years ago, but the Backstreet Boys' smallest fan has helped scientists make an all-new discovery: Birds can dance.

And so far, they're the only known animals to display such rhythm.

Cats, dogs, and lab monkeys spend lots of time around human music. But no animal had ever been confirmed as moving to a beat—leading to the common belief that animals ain't got rhythm.

For one of two new studies on animal dancing, Aniruddh Patel at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego and colleagues worked with Snowball the parrot, which seems to love "dancing" to the likes of Queen and Backstreet Boys.

To test whether the sulphur-crested cockatoo was really keeping a beat, the scientists would change the music's tempo—represented in these videos as "BPM" (beats per minute).

Not one to miss a beat, Snowball quickly picked up the new rhythms, stomping and head-bobbing in time.

read more (221 words)  Email Article To a Friend View Printable Version
Post a comment

Mexico's Parrot Trade Exposed
Monday, April 27 2009 @ 12:52 PM UTC
Contributed by: Paul Brennan
Views: 9038
Conservation Defenders Magazine
Spring 2009
Mexico's Parrot Trade Exposed
Defenders of Wildlife fights to stop trafficking of wild birds

by Charles Bergman

Arms flailing and menace in her eyes, the woman charges me from behind a pile of cages. I heard her husband say something about giving her a cuchillo—a knife.

"No photos!" she yells in Spanish. "Don't take photos! Get out of here!"

I back away slowly.

We are in Xochimilco, a lively, outdoor market in Mexico City, where this woman is running a puesto, or stand for selling animals. She has stacks of animals in cages all around her, like walls of living creatures. In her cages are yellow-cheeked Amazons and orange-fronted parakeets—native Mexican parrots, caught in the wild. She doesn't want me to photograph them because they are illegal.

Juan Carlos Cantu, director of Defenders of Wildlife's Mexico office, has brought me here, along with Maria Elena Sanchez, president of Teyeliz, a Mexican conservation organization. For over a decade they have been fighting Mexico's illegal parrot trade. No one in the country knows more about it than these two—not the authorities, not even the traders. With support from Defenders of Wildlife, they have recently published the first comprehensive report on the problem, exposing the tricks of this trade. They brought me to Xochimilco to show me its dark and dirty secrets.

"This woman knows what she's doing is illegal," Cantu says. "That's why she's angry. Sellers often get violent."

When Cantu and Sanchez began their research, they already knew the illegal trade was huge. "We knew because we could see them for sale in the markets, like these parrots here," says Cantu. "But no one knew how big. Now we have numbers—for the first time."

According to the study, between 65,000 and 78,500 parrots are illegally trapped in the wild in Mexico every year, and thousands are smuggled across the border into the United States.

read more (1458 words)  Email Article To a Friend View Printable Version
Post a comment

Good News for Critically Endangered Parrot
Monday, February 23 2009 @ 08:17 PM UTC
Contributed by: Paul Brennan
Views: 6581
Conservation The miraculous discovery of a male kakapo (Strigops habroptila), over twenty years after it was last seen has boosted the known world population of this Critically Endangered parrot to 91.

BirdLife International reports that the flightless, nocturnal bird was recently rediscovered ‘booming’ (the male’s unique, resonant mating call) where no kakapos had been detected before.

The bird had not been seen since 1987, when it was one of four males released onto a conservation sanctuary near Stewart Island, New Zealand. As well as giving the potential for introducing extra genetic material into the kakapo breeding programme, the find has raised hopes of discovering more kakapos on this and other islands.

read more (164 words)  Email Article To a Friend View Printable Version
Post a comment

Home for parrots whose owners flew the coop
Saturday, November 01 2008 @ 11:38 AM UTC
Contributed by: MikeSchindlinger
Views: 38080
General News A sanctuary for unwanted parrots

(Boston Globe) Foster Parrots provides homes for birds that can no longer be taken care of by their owners. The birds are intelligent and social but become moreaggressive as they mature. By Joanne Rathe, Globe Staff / By Bina Venkataraman /Globe Correspondent / October 27, 2008

The shrieks of Moluccan cockatoos ricochet off the walls in a cacophonous roar, while parakeets clamor "Hello! Hello!" to one another. At the New England Exotic Wildlife Sanctuary, more than 300 parrots take ambient noise to new heights.

This is the first parrot sanctuary of its size and caliber in the country, said author Mira Tweti, who has studied the parrot trade for more than a decade. With aviaries that stretch more than 7,000 square feet, and an additional 5,000 square feet of flying space under construction, the sanctuary provides something that thousands of parrots lack: a permanent home.

Many of these former pet birds were shuffled from house to house for years before they landed here, and were adopted by Foster Parrots, a nonprofit group started by Marc Johnson, of Middleborough. The sanctuary lies on a 15-acre plot about 5 miles from the Connecticut border, in a single-story building that was once - oddly enough - the broiler house for a chicken farm. Since setting up shop in December, Johnson has been getting more and more calls from people hoping to unload their parrots.

read more (748 words) 1 comments Email Article To a Friend View Printable Version
Most Recent Post: 05/03 03:45AM by tracey

Who's Online
Guest Users: 7

Foster Parrots - Adoption and Conservation

Vote

How many years have you lived with a parrot?

0 - 1
1 - 2
2 - 5
5 - 10
10 - 20
20 - 30
30 -40
40 - 50
50 or more
never
Results
1853 votes | 0 comments

Vote

Where does your parrot's species live? (Cast an additional vote for each bird you live with)

Central America
South America
Caribbean
Africa
Asia
Australia
Oceania
Don't know...
Results
1307 votes | 3 comments

Adopt a Parrot ?

Current Parrot News
  • Conservation Program Prepares Captive Parrots For Life In The Wild - Texas A&M Today
  • These parrots once roamed the American Southwest. Scientists are trying to help them : Short Wave - NPR
  • Does parrot farming protect wild species? Wildlife trade researchers review the evidence - The Conversation
  • Record-Breaking Migration of Orange-Bellied Parrot Will be Flying High After Years of Conservation Work Pays Off - Good News Network
  • In Brazil, free-flight lessons help teach macaws to survive in the wild - Mongabay
  • Vantara reintroduces 41 extinct-in-the-wild Spix’s Macaws in Brazil - Nation Thailand
  • This unorthodox method is saving baby parrots from extinction - National Geographic
  • Endangered Neotropical Parrots Inform In Situ and Ex Situ - ResearchGate
  • Celebrating World Parrot Day: Introducing the IUCN SSC Wild Parrot Specialist Group to Boost Global Parrot Conservation - IUCN
  • Finalists for 2025 Indianapolis Prize helping protect parrots, manatees, jaguars and more - IndyStar
  • These parrots once roamed the American Southwest. Scientists are trying to help them : Short Wave - NPR
  • Critically endangered parakeets get a new home on New Zealand island - Mongabay
  • Media Release - Vantara Partners with ACTP to Reintroduce 41 Extinct-in-the-Wild Spix’s Macaws in Brazil An Initiative Demonstrating Vantara’s Commitment to Advancing Global Wildlife Conservation Jamnagar (Gujarat), 30th January 2025: Declared extinct - Facebook
  • Expectations set for a record-breaking orange-bellied parrot migration as more captive-bred birds released - Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  • (PDF) Effects of bird-feeding activities on the health of wild birds - ResearchGate
  • China’s plans to trace wildlife trade risks inflaming trafficking, critics warn - Mongabay
  • For ‘extinct’ Spix’s macaw, successful comeback is overshadowed by uncertainty - Mongabay
  • CITES suspends Bangladesh as illegal wild bird trade continues - Mongabay
  • Institutional conflict puts successful Spix’s macaw reintroduction at risk - Mongabay
  • Breaking Chains, Saving Wings: Wildlife SOS-GSPCA and Forest Department Rescue Parrots from Captivity - Pune Times Mirror
  • FIU conservation scientists give trafficked, endangered parrots fighting chance - FIU News
  • Rare orange-bellied parrot chick born at Victorian wildlife conservation park - Pulse Tasmania
  • UC student's parrot conservation work featured in new docuseries - University of Cincinnati
  • Singapore’s Wild Bird Trade Raises Troubling Questions About African Grey Parrots - WCS Newsroom
  • Five seabird species added to conservation 'red list' - BBC
  • Saving parrots in the illegal wildlife trade with DNA technology - Earth.com
  • illegal trade in parrots punished with strong convictions - International Fund for Animal Welfare | IFAW
  • Texas A&M Researchers Apply Free-Flight Training To Parrot Conservation - Texas A&M Today
  • EU’s legal loophole feeds gray market for world’s rarest parrot - Mongabay
  • Parrots - Defenders of Wildlife
  • How the wild parrots of San Diego arrived in America's Finest City - 10News.com
  • Can We Conserve Endangered Parrots By Keeping Them In Cities? - Forbes
  • Wildlife Trafficking Is the Biggest Threat to Birds on the 2016 IUCN Red List - National Audubon Society
  • Bird’s-eye view: Lessons from 50 years of bird trade regulation & conservation in Amazon countries - Traffic.org
  • L.A. is home to a famous flocks of parrots. How'd they get there? - National Geographic
  • Saving the blue parrots of South America - BBC Earth
  • Celebrating World Parrot Day: Costa Rica's Commitment to Conservation and Awareness : - The Tico Times
  • Singaporean man jailed and fined for trying to smuggle 11 wild birds into Malaysia - The Straits Times
  • Video: Thousands of illegally caught African gray parrots being rehabilitated - Mongabay
  • Field Notes: Reinvigorating wild parrot populations with captive birds - Mongabay
  • MEDIA NOTE: Confiscated Birds Released to Wild in Indonesia - WCS Newsroom
  • There are 14 wild orange-bellied parrots left – this summer is our last chance to save them - The Conversation
  • Juan Carlos CantĂș - Defenders of Wildlife
  • Trade in African Grey Parrots for Belief-Based Use: Insights From West Africa's Largest Traditional Medicine Market - Frontiers
  • US Fish And Wildlife Provides Funding To Help Conserve The Puerto Rican Parrot - Forbes
  • Orange-bellied parrot shows there’s more to saving endangered species than captive breeding - The Conversation
  • The Kākāpƍ Parrot Returns To New Zealand - Science Friday
  • More capacity building funds needed for small nonprofit conservation groups (commentary) - Mongabay
  • Global trade in African grey parrots banned - Phys.org
  • Singapore’s Wild Bird Trade Raises Troubling Questions About African Grey Parrots - Traffic.org
  • Bans on the bird trade in South America yield mixed results - Mongabay
  • ‘Astronomical Money’: How Smugglers Made Tens of Millions Moving Rare Birds Around the World - Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project | OCCRP
  • African grey parrot has global summit to thank for protected status | Illegal wildlife trade - The Guardian
  • Saving flightless parrots from extinction - BBC Wildlife Magazine
  • A thriving online market for wild birds emerges in Bangladesh - Mongabay
  • Spix’s macaw returns to Brazil, but is overshadowed by controversy - Mongabay
  • Echo parakeet management programme - ZSL
  • International trade in African grey parrots banned - Mongabay
  • This parrot was thought to be extinct in the wild — until a farmer spotted one - The Washington Post
  • Critically Endangered Parrot Bounces Back in Huge Conservation Victory - ScienceAlert
  • Spix's Macaw returns to wild - BirdGuides
  • ‘A legitimate zoo?’ How an obscure German group cornered global trade in endangered parrots - The Guardian
  • Parrot species declared extinct in the wild flies again - EnviroNews Nigeria
  • Some of San Francisco's iconic wild parrots are sick. Meet the people who are saving them. - SFGATE
  • Ceremonial Headdresses Threaten Vulnerable Parrot Species - WorldAtlas
  • Habitat Preferences of the Grey Parrot in Heterogeneous Vegetation Landscapes and Their Conservation Implications - Wiley Online Library
  • The 12 Endangered Birds Most At Risk of Extinction - Earth.com
  • Parrots Seized from Congolese Traffickers in April 2022 released to the wild - Modern Ghana
  • Hobby aviculturists believe they can help conserve endangered birds - Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  • Hopes of saving orange-bellied parrot hang on foster baby - Australian Broadcasting Corporation
  • Don’t give up on orange-bellied parrots yet, there’s still hope - The Conversation
  • Islamabad takes proactive measures to protect parrots - The News International
  • UWEC unveils African Grey Parrot Conservation Center - ChimpReports
  • UWEC releases back into the wild rehabilitated African grey parrots - Nilepost News
  • Parrots Seized from Congolese Traffickers Released to the Wild - SoftPower News
  • World sensation: Return of a parrot species extinct in the wild - lifePR
  • Earth Wire -- Global trade in wild African Grey Parrot banned, U.N. meeting rules - ANTARA News
  • UWEC opens Uganda’s first grey parrot conservation centre - Daily Monitor
  • Uganda releases over 50 captive parrots into the wild - NewVision.co.ug
  • New general licences for the control of wild birds - GOV.UK
  • Uganda releases parrots seized from Congolese traffickers - PML Daily
  • Stunning Birds That Have Been Reintroduced To The Wild - grunge.com

  • Wild Parrot Documentary