Aussie Finch Forum

Danny wrote:Just another perspective - I import a bit of bird taxidermy from Europe. The vast majority of these birds are close ringed, ex private or ex zoo birds. Only 1 in 5 parcels, labelled as taxidermied birds, gets inspected by AQIS. Of those inspected, I have had specimens passed by AQIS as appropriately packaged and released to me, despite there being faecal material visible on the birds feet or stuck to the leg ring. If AQIS can miss these details (it was the first thing I noticed) and miss entire shipments despite clear labelling, what else are they overlooking?? I suspect if they had 20 more staff they would still be missing things coming through.

Danny,

If you have time one day, i'd like to see some photos of your collection.

Cheers Ian

Great stuff contributors. Even I'm getting hyped up just reading about this, let alone experiencing our Government Department at work.

The way I see it AQIS has got nothing to do with what comes in or what goes out of the country. If it's in the book as "allowed substance, bird or animal" it comes in if not it's destroyed. With wild type of birds of animals that are so called "smuggled" into the country it is most unlikely the disease are brought into the country. I'm sure if anyone tries to smuggle in a bird or an animal would not select a sick or unwell creature. It is most likely disease are brought into the country when large number animals are brought into the country. Those of you who have never seen in what condition those creature are kept before exporting you wouldn't know. Often a crate 1meter x 1/2meter x 0.3meter contains 100 or more smaller or medium birds, you can clearly see, in some, 50% of feathers is missing, imagine the disese the stress in those birds can trigger. Therefore it is better that several birds get in to the country either legally (or illegally) then adopting an attitude "trap and export anything that moves". Legalizing import into the country is not going to happen and it should not happen, considering how many species are on the threatened or endangered list, and this is not because of trapping it is more often due to the destruction of their environment. Just think how many jobs would the Tasmanian Government create if they allow mining or to cut every single tree on the island.

Importation of captive-bred stock is entirely different to the horrible scenes you see in say Mexico where illegal trapping still occurs on a large scale with all those cramped birds in cages.
That is not what we are talking about. I agree with you about THAT stuff, netsurfer!
Are we far enough down the track to have fosters kept in quarantine to raise finch eggs? I don't know. I reckon the parrot people could do that and/or handrear. Diseases would surely be minimised. No system - even the current one - is perfect (vis pigeon outbreak!).
The CITES/endangered issue should not come into it if the birds are captive bred. Proving same can be difficult. I was under the impression that CITES concerned itself with wild populations, not captive stuff (?)

Netsurfer wrote:Therefore it is better that several birds get in to the country either legally (or illegally) then adopting an attitude "trap and export anything that moves". Legalizing import into the country is not going to happen and it should not happen, considering how many species are on the threatened or endangered list

I've missed your point . . are you for or against legal importation, properly carried out, and properly supervised by competent people

Legal importation would be a great thing even if it was just a shipment a year of captive bred stock, think even just a hand full of green avadavats would be enough to inrich the gene pool and give us a strong stock pool for the hard to find species. and people shouldn't say about its about habitat destruction as why do we keep birds in the first place. if not just for our enjoyment but if there is a disaster in the world and we have the birds breeding in captivity then we can repopulate the disaster area in a few years.there are many storys in the media about that eg spix macaws,bali starlings,blue and gold macaws.The list goes on and people are still under the impression that imports are bad some people need to wake up to the fact its not all grab it and bag it like the old days.

Hi Roma,

I appreciate your sentiments but I wouldn't use either Spix's Macaw nor the Bali Mynah as great examples about aviculture's role in saving species in the wild.
Yes, they have been bred reasonably well in captivity, but illegal trapping for the bird trade contributed to their extinction (or near extinction) in the wild, albeit from already declining populations.

In fact, a pair of Bali Mynahs were offered for sale in Australia not so long ago...

Now, if you mentioned say Orange-bellied parrots, now there's a species whose fate in the wild is doomed, which has had absolutely nothing to do with aviculture.
Aviculture, however, is its only hope for surviving at all as a living species.

well there you go but you get what i mean, but there trying to fix the problem with aviary bred birds

yes, but let's not dwell on that one too much either, or I'll tear what's left of my hair out !!!

ok myzomela.