Jakarta : For four hours I was lost in the maze of lanes of Pasar Burung, the famous bird market behind Pasar Pramuka in Jakarta Timur (East). Its more than 150 shops were not only home to lakhs of birds held in cages of all sizes, it also had a number of them selling bird feed—from insects dead and alive, to grains of all shapes and sizes.
This is one market where a veteran ornithologist will have to consult an encyclopaedia to identify many of the birds in cages. Some of these were shops dealing in specific families of birds like chickens, pegeons, parrots….Many cages had names of the species written to make life easy for buyers.
Three kinds of caged birds were there. Single bird in a cage, a pair in a cage and a family or a clan in a cage. Each cage, equipped with a water bowl and a food plate, was being meticulously kept clean by shop attendants. Many a family of birds were feeding on split ripe bananas, insects and a variety of grains. Water and feed were replenished time to time and bird-shit cleared everyday, or as per the prefixed cleaning cycle.
How these shopkeepers manage the food chain for such a large universe of birds in this market remains a mystery. Not a single bird dies of hunger or thirst in these cages. Hats off to these veteran ‘ornithologists’ who can be seen tending to these birds all the time.
When you cram lakhs of birds in cages in such a small area smell of bird-shit will definitely be there in the air. However, full credit to shop owners because there were no bird droppings on floors. They place a sheet at the bottom of the cage to make cleaning of the cages easy.
Majority of birds as pets are kept in Java, the world’s most populous island with 148.76 million people (2021). This is close to 55 per cent of the nation’s population. Long time back it was reported that “one third of 36 million households in Java owned up to 84 million caged birds”. With economic prosperity, demand for these has only grown and today millions of birds are held captive in cages at homes, shops and offices of locals across the nation.
This tropical island nation, blessed with lush green rain forests, flora and fauna, is home to billions of birds and hundreds of their species. Here bird trade is legal and this fact has fuelled the craze for birds as pets. Birds are extracted or captured from the verdant forests and brought to cities for sale. This has resulted in an overkill with many bird species facing extinction, according to various reports available in the digital media.
The government authorities have declared many species as protected and banned their trade. These protected species can only be moved around the country with valid permits from authorities and traded under their watchful eyes. But like elsewhere in the world, thousands of people are engaged in illegal capture/trapping of birds and their trade.
Newspapers report regular seizures of birds from traffickers. But as usual these seizures or confiscations would not even be a tip of the iceberg as they say. As per media reports organised gangs are in full control of this multi-million dollar trade and they leave no stone unturned to hoodwink the authorities. Or may be they are hand in glove with law makers whose job is to prevent illegal trade in birds.
For bird smugglers to succeed they have to be experts in island hopping by boats, ferries and planes. There are a number of dedicated markets for bird trade, the biggest being in Java. I visited one of them. These trading hubs receive birds from forests spread across the islands.
With improving economy Java’s notoriety as the main trading hub of birds in the country has only grown stronger. Obviously the law enforcers are looking the other way, otherwise how can the bird traffickers reach main trading hubs with their illegal catch of the day or week?
Reports claim that there has been a sharp fall in the number of very popular species of birds. Authorities are promoting captive breeding of these species, but when man’s greed and obsession for keeping birds in cages run riot who will have the patience to go in for captive breeding?
As long as there is demand for birds of all kinds in the country and authorities are lax, bird traffickers will continue to have a field day. The administration must initiate tough measures to rein in the traffickers besides educating its citizens to let birds live in their habitats — the rich rain forests spread across the 17,508 islands of Indonesia.
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