Parrots & The Pet Trade

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There's probably no one that knows more about the pet bird industry in the US than Mira Tweti and that's why the bird breeders (all the ones that wrote that they hated the piece - that's them) are always trying to take her down. They're like the NRA for birds: They oppose every law to regulate them and abhor transparency in their practices because if the public could see what they're doing to these poor birds they'd never buy another one!

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to see the gross abuse of parrots made acceptable over human history! Well, Tweti is working to raise public awareness that it needs to stop and she has done a MAGNIFICIENT job of it.

If you want to know the truth about companion parrots do what others posted here have suggested: get Mira Tweti's books - Of Parrots and People: the Sometimes Funny, Always Fascinating, and Often Catastrophic Collision of Two Intelligent Species.

And Here, There and Everywhere, the first parrot welfare children's book lauded "a masterpiece that should be in every library, school and home," by Dr. Jane Goodall.

You can buy signed copies (and she'll inscribe them if you ask her) via www.ParrotPress.net (Mira's site,) or on Amazon or in any bookstore chain.

Of Parrots and People is an expose' on the parrot trade that reads like a detective story - you won't be able to put it down. I couldn't!

Tweti is a multi-award winning investigative journalist that has written for the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Village Voice, LA Weekly, Tacoma News Tribune and man, many other newspapers and magazines! That's why CBS interviewed her - because she has done first hand reporting on these issues for more than a decade. And she had a major book published, the first of it's kind, last fall.

Her book is based on a Los Angeles Times Magazine award-winning expose' on the US parrot industry and Tweti spent five years writing the book. She did more than 500 interviews with avian biologists, accredited researchers at Harvard and other universities (not any dopey parrot owner with an opinion as you'll find here), US FIsh and Wildlife, conservationists, avian rescuers across the US, and many more.

It would be good if people had their facts straight about Mira Tweti before claiming things that have no truth in them: She did not buy her Lorikeet, Zazu. Like the CBS segment accurately reported she adopted him after her first parrot, Mango, died tragically from an infection (she got condolences from across the US and overseas).

It was Mango who raised her consciousness about the conditions of birds in many breeding facilities and that they were "parrot mills" and inhumane. She's written about this extensively since 1995 - in Bird Talk, parrotcrhonicles.com, and even the lory society journal early on, and more. It's public knowledge. She is the last person who would buy another parrot - why would anyone when there are thousands waiting to be adopted?

And why would anyone who really cared about these wonderful birds breed more when the average pet parrot has 7 homes in the first 10 years of its life!

They are passed around like old clothes to family and friends when their owners realize what a challenge it is to keep a screaming, biting, destructive wild animal in their home and worse yet - to keep a beautiful flying creature in perpetually imprisoned?

And, last but not least: if you read Mira's book you'd know that the Humane Society of the US is saying that birds relinquished by their owners to rescues, even great rescues, are not living a high quality life. They are still in cages, usually alone. Even though they're fed and kept clean, it's still no life for a flocking animal that needs trees and a life in the sky. So they're saying rather than warehouse them for decades, it's more humane to euthanize them.

It won't be an issue soon, as the numbers are increasing of unwanted parrots and there's already no places for them in rescues. They'll end up like their cat & dog counterparts: after living unhappy lives in captivity, they'll be euthanized at local SPCA's or animal control shelters as unwanted pets. And all this while their wild cousins are going extinct in the wild from the pet trade!