African gray parrots, one of the world’s most trafficked birds, can no longer be captured or traded across the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Tshopo province, a key transit route for traffickers, according to a recent decree passed by the provincial government.
Known for their intelligence and ability to mimic human speech, gray parrots (Psittacus erithacus) are highly sought after in the international pet trade. However, their widespread capture from the wild has led to severe population declines across their range in Africa, leading to them being listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List in 2016.
Their “slow rate of reproduction, and tendency to aggregate in large flocks makes them highly vulnerable to overexploitation,” Rowan Martin, U.K.-based director of the Africa Conservation Programme at the NGO World Parrot Trust, told Mongabay by email.
Tshopo is the third DRC province, after Maniema and Sankuru, to ban the capture and sale of the parrots.
The Tshopo ban is significant because the province is central to the gray parrot trade, funneling parrots from other provinces “through its major national airport Bangoka and through its River ports — including from the provinces of Ituri, Maniema, Bas Uele, and Mongala,” Terese Hart of the NGO Lukuru Foundation that works to protect gray parrots in the DRC, told Mongabay by email.
The decree effectively cuts off transport in and through Tshopo, she added, which will disrupt the movement of parrots to international airports, like in Kinshasa, the DRC capital.
“The main driving force behind the trade in DRC is very high international demand,” Hart said. This is despite the gray parrot being included in Appendix I of CITES, the global wildlife trade convention, in 2016. That listing means all international commercial trade in wild-caught gray parrots is prohibited.
At a February meeting of the CITES Standing Committee in Geneva, experts noted that the trade in gray parrots in the DRC “continues at very high levels.”
The recent Tshopo decree bans the capture and trade of both gray and red-fronted parrots (Poicephalus gulielmi), also called the “green” parrot. It also notes that any aircraft found carrying gray or green parrots without the required authorization “will be considered complicit.”
Including both parrot species in bans is important because traffickers often conceal gray parrots within consignments of red-fronted parrots, which can be legally exported from the DRC under existing CITES rules, Martin said.
In August 2024, for example, Turkish authorities seized a shipment of 309 gray parrots, falsely declared as green parrots, which had originated from Kinshasa.
“It’s vital that wildlife trade regulations take into account these vulnerabilities and we’re encouraged that the decree is forward thinking in this regard,” Martin said.
Banner image of gray parrot by L.Miguel Bugallo Sánchez via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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