Parrots & Parrot Smuggling in Guerrero, Mexico

Parrots in Acapulco

There are numoerous species of rare birds that make there way through these parts but most are smuggled from Central and South America. Two specicies in particular are indegenous to the Acapulco Guerrero area (or nearby) - the Yellow-headed Amazon Parrot (or as we lay people like to call them amazona ochrocephala oratix) and the Yellow-napped Amazon Parrot (amazona auropalliata ) both of which can be found from Southern Mexico down to Costa Rica.

Parrot Smuggling

When I decided to tackle this subject I was ready to regale you all with tales of the maroon fronted parrot, the thick billed parrot, the lilac crowned parrot and even Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha pachyrhyncha ( yes it really exists… lets face it no one could make that up…) but I don't think I know enough. I suppose I might see a couple of them a week in their natural habitat, or perhaps I should say not in cages, on their noisy fly bys. They are however always too far away to identify and I probably wouldn't be able to distinguish a thick billed from a maroon fronted anyway.

So I decided to pontificate on smuggling. Parrot smuggling is the second most lucrative illegal cross border activity. Which is first cocaine or people? Your answers on a postcard please. It is estimated that at least 25,000 birds are smuggled across the Texas border each year. Probably 5 times that number die before they even get to the frontier, many being plucked from their nests at an age when they are quite incapable of surviving. There is also a very lucrative trade to Europe.

According to TRAFFIC, a World Wildlife Fund trade monitoring unit, the annual retail turnover in all kinds of parrots, both imported and captive bred, in the United States is estimated at $300,000,000. Captive bred birds do not make a very large percentage of this astonishing figure.

Parrots have become one of the most threatened species in the world … not entirely due to thievery but also because of habitat destruction.

The profit margins are not dissimilar to those of the cocaine trade. A parrot that costs $20 in Mexico can fetch between $300 and $10,000 on the open market in the US or Europe. The penalties for being caught aren't quite so stiff either. To make matters worse for the birds the US Fish and Wildlife Service is desperately under funded. Good grief, there are wars to be fought and terrorists will be tried before anyone gets round to some Mexican parrot smuggler.

When viewed against the other pressing matters, who really gives a damn about a few birds? We all should because this is symptomatic of a general malaise, which will eventually bring the human race to its knees. We simply care more about making money than anything else. The planet will live on … a poorer place but there are plenty of ants and cockroaches to take our place.

One small note:

Before I knew any better I had a parrot. I cannot think of a less convenient pet. They are noisy, dirty and incredibly destructive. They should be left in the jungle to rip up leaves and spit bits of fruit all over the place not shut in an apartment to eat the Turkish rug and shred the silk curtains.

Parrots are known locally as loros. The really large ones (the variety you see at the zoo or sitting on a pirate's sholder) are guacamayas and are not indigenous to Guererro but are *ahem* imported from South America, and at several thousand dollars each they fetch a might price even this far south.