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Macaws of Bolivia

October 27, 1999

The grisly trade in animal parts is never a comfortable subject to contemplate. At this very moment, in stores in Bolivia, pieces of Macaws, other parrots and a wide range of unidentified birds lie neatly piled in polythene packs, for sale to anyone who is sick enough to pay for them. Wings, breasts and whole tails are hacked off birds and sold as fashion accessories to adorn grotesque headdresses which are worn during street festivals, carnivals and parades. These are not sold for traditional use by indigenous peoples, these are worn by ordinary city and town dwellers purely as decoration.

There can never be any excuse for such barbarism and the fact the Bolivian government permits the continuation this utter cruelty and waste of life is a damning indictment of its total disregard for wildlife unfortunate enough to live within its boundaries. Bolivia is a signatory to CITES and as such has pledged to protect wildlife and pay a positive role in the conservation of endangered species. The government cannot plead ignorance to the ever popular and increasing numbers of headdresses 'decorated' with wings and tails which are being paraded in the streets at every opportunity.

All who profess to care about the future of parrots in the wild, should register a protest with the Bolivian government and I would urge you to flood their offices in a sea of complaints. A small selection of photographs showing details of this horrific practice can be seen at:

http://www.ilsham.demon.co.uk/parrots/bolivia.html

There is an e-mail link for you to mail your protest to - please use it. We will be contacting CITES head offices and the World Wide Fund for Nature to urge them to put pressure on the Bolivians. It may be comparatively easy to stop the trade from the store mentioned, but it will be far harder to prevent the same thing occurring again and again throughout the country. Thousands of birds are being needlessly slaughtered, how long will it be before there are none left? We cannot guarantee getting any results, but if enough of you and your friends 'kick ass', we can certainly give them a hard enough time to make them think hard about allowing this to continue.

Please pass this around to anyone and everyone you can think of - we need numbers, thousands of them.