Title
Measuring the impact of the pet trade on indonesian birds
Author(s)
Harris, J. Berton C.;Tingley, Morgan W.;Hua, Fangyuan;Yong, Ding Li;Adeney, J. Marion;Lee, Tien Ming;Marthy, William;Prawiradilaga, Dewi M.;Sekercioglu, Cagan H.;Suyadi,  ;Winarni, Nurul;Wilcove, David S.
Published
2017
Publisher
Conservation Biology
Published Version DOI
https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.12729
Abstract
The trade in wild animals involves one third of the world's bird species and thousands of other vertebrate species. While a few species are known to be imperiled as a result of the wildlife trade, the lack of field studies makes it difficult to gauge how serious a threat it is to biodiversity. We combined data on changes in bird abundances across space and time with trapper interviews to evaluate the effects of trapping wild birds for pets in Sumatra, Indonesia, an international pet trade hotspot. In southern Sumatra we analyzed bird abundance changes over time using a rare 14-year dataset of repeated bird surveys from the same extensive forest. In northern Sumatra we surveyed birds along a gradient of trapping accessibility, from the edge of roads to five km into the forest interior. We also interviewed 49 bird trappers in northern Sumatra to learn which species they target and how far they go into the forest to trap. We found that market price was a significant predictor of species declines over time in southern Sumatra, implicating the pet trade in those declines. In northern Sumatra, we found no relationship between price and change in abundance as a function of remoteness. However, high-value species were rare or absent across our surveys there. Notably, the median maximum distance trappers went into the forest each day was 5.0 km. This suggests that trapping has depleted bird populations across our remoteness gradient. Alarmingly, we found that less than half of Sumatra's remaining forests are >5km from a major road. These results indicate that trapping for the pet trade is a threat to birds in Sumatra. Given the popularity of pet birds across Southeast Asia, additional studies are urgently needed to determine the extent and magnitude of the threat posed by the pet trade. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
Keywords
decline;overexploitation;sumatra;trapping;wild population;wildlife trade

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