A whistleblower working for the RSPB prompted this programme about the cruel and hugely profitable wild bird trade. He had previously worked for a large and now defunct company called Safari Select, the owner of which had 13 convictions for cruelty and forging import documents. It is legal to sell captive bred birds, but that’s not what Safari Select did. They sold wild caught birds which is definitely illegal, but claimed they’d been bred in captivity.
Exotic birds bought for pence from native hunters in developing countries were sold on in the UK for thousands of pounds each, a quarter of a million of them every year. Sadly, some 80 percent of them died in transit - further accelerating the demand and putting some species at risk of extinction. The Cook team followed the wild bird trade around the world - to Indonesia, Singapore and Zimbabwe, exposing the trade for exactly what it was. Safari Select closed down. Partly as a result of the programme, the trade in all wild-caught birds - not just endangered ones - was banned throughout the EU in 2007.
8 сен 2022
