- With an alarming rise in the international trade of African hornbills, wild populations are plummeting. As key seed dispersers, their demise also threatens the survival of the forests they inhabit.
- According to recent studies, the United States is a major market for African hornbills, with more than 2,500 individuals or their parts imported into the country between 1999 and 2024. Another 500 were traded online from 2010 to 2024.
- Although the drivers of the trade are unknown, West and Central Africa are trade hotspots, with Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo being the main source countries.
- The international trade in African hornbills is currently unregulated, unlike that of their Asian counterparts. But a proposal to control this trade is on the agenda at the upcoming CITES meeting, which conservationists say is the first step to rein in unsustainable trade.
For millions of years, the African landscape — the rainforests, woodlands, savannas and scrublands — has echoed with the booms and cackles of large, raucous, strange-looking birds: hornbills. When U.S. ornithologist Nico Arcilla came to Gabon in the late 1990s as a Peace Corps volunteer, these noisy birds enchanted her.
“There’d be a big flock of them flying together, and you could hear them because their wings are big, and they’re loud when they fly,” she reminisced. “They’re fabulous birds … very charismatic and iconic.”
Arcilla returned to West Africa almost a decade later, in 2008, after earning a Ph.D. in forestry, to study how rampant logging in Ghana affected forest birds. She’d hoped to see hornbills in the forest canopies, she said, but to her disbelief, she saw none. “I saw parrots, but no hornbills.”
She discovered a “frightening” reason for their disappearance: international trade. In a 2007 study, forensic ornithologist Pepper Trail documented an alarming rise in bushmeat hunting and international trade in African hornbills, particularly to the United States. Arcilla also heard stories about the hornbill trade when she spoke to her colleagues. But details about who was buying the birds, where they were sold, the size of the trade, and, importantly, how it was impacting the continent’s hornbills, remained scant.
None of the 32 known species of African hornbills is listed under CITES, a global wildlife trade agreement, so their international trade is entirely unregulated.
In the last decade, Arcilla, who is now president and research director at the International Bird Conservation Partnership (IBCP), teamed up with other researchers in Africa to learn how poaching is impacting the continent’s hornbills. These studies revealed a puzzling pattern. African hornbill heads are in great demand on the international market, driving hunting, especially in West Africa. But it’s not clear why. These birds are sold both dead and alive, online and offline.
The hornbill trade isn’t new. Asian hornbill casques — the soft, hollow structure above their oversized bills — have long been coveted, carved into decorative items, just like ivory, dating back to the 1300s. But until recently, African hornbills hadn’t been documented in the international trade.
The continent’s birds already face different threats. Poaching and bushmeat hunting have decimated hornbills in Togo, Ghana and Nigeria. With deforestation and degraded forests already hammering these ecologically vital species, the growing international trade in African hornbills now adds to conservationists’ concerns.
Ecological importance of Africa’s hornbills
Africa is home to half of the world’s 64 known hornbill species. They’re distributed across the continent, with forest-dwelling species concentrated in the west and central regions. Unlike their Asian cousins, whose ranges don’t overlap, the African species often share habitat with each other. They’re keystone species that are critical to regenerating forests because they disperse seeds widely.
Studies show that each year, just two species of hornbills in Cameroon — the black-casqued hornbill (Ceratogumna atrata) and the white-thighed hornbill (Bycanistes albotibialis) — spread the seeds of one-quarter of tree species across hundreds of kilometers.
“They’ve been known as the ‘farmers of the forest’ for the longest time,” said Lucy Kemp, project director at the Mabula Ground Hornbill Project, who also serves as the Africa chair for the Hornbill Specialist Group at the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.
These birds are long-lived, surviving 15-20 years in the wild. They reproduce slowly, raising just one chick a year, so populations don’t easily bounce back from losses.
Most hornbill species pair for life. The male plays a vital parental role by providing food for the female, who seals herself in a tree cavity with a narrow slit while raising her young chick. If the male dies during this period, it’s a death sentence for the female and the chick.
While much is known about Asian hornbills, their African cousins are poorly studied and often receive less attention than other charismatic species on the continent. Most are classified as species of least concern on the IUCN Red List, meaning their populations aren’t thought to be threatened with extinction. But with little information about their status, Kemp said they should be listed as data deficient, as we don’t know how they’re faring in the wild.
Experts say they worry the unknown trade volume may spell more danger than we know for these species.
African hornbills in trade
Over the last century, hornbill numbers nosedived across Southeast Asia due to the trade in their casques. One species quickly crashed: In just three years, the helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil) went from being near threatened to critically endangered. To save them from extinction, all Southeast Asian hornbills were added to CITES Appendix I in 1992, which prohibits all commercial international trade.
While that intervention helped save the Asian species, the pressure shifted to the unprotected African hornbills. It’s a phenomenon seen before: When Asian pangolins and rosewood trees received trade protections, their African counterparts declined precipitously.
Kemp called the current scale of hornbill trade “terrifying.” Their ecological and cultural values are “being stripped for money,” she added. “We need to be putting the brakes on before we fall down the precipice.”
This year, Kemp, Arcilla and others published the first-ever study mapping the international trade in African hornbills, providing some detail on its scale. They pulled hornbill trade data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Law Enforcement Management Information System (LEMIS) and the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and also scanned online marketplaces and social media for listings.
Their findings were startling. The number of African hornbills entering the U.S. with dried heads devoid of feathers, empty eye sockets, but intact casques, far exceeded imports of Asian hornbills that came in before they were protected under CITES. That trade is now increasing by about 3% each year.
Between 1999 and 2024, the U.S., which ranks as one of the world’s largest wildlife importers, received 573 shipments of at least 2,619 hornbills. That’s about 100 per year, all likely taken from the wild. A whopping 94.5% were African hornbills.
While 100 birds a year might not sound huge — unlike songbirds that are traded in the millions — it’s disastrous for a long-lived, slow-breeding species. “They have all the characteristics for extinction,” Kemp said. “This level of offtake is unsustainable.”
The study found that about 45% of the hornbills entering the U.S. were shipped alive; more than half were shipped dead, either whole or in parts. Hornbill heads were the most in-demand product, followed by their large casques and black-and-white flight feathers.
The study also tracked the trade of ground-dwelling species such as the vulnerable Abyssinian ground hornbill (Bucorvus abyssinicus). About 75 birds were seized in Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East since 2022. Bangladesh greenlit the import of hundreds of African hornbills from 2021-2022 that were sourced from Mali, Senegal and the Democratic Republic of Congo. India serves as a trade hub for many West African birds and has become an emerging hotspot for African hornbills, Kemp said.
In March 2025, the Nigeria Customs Service seized 128 hornbill heads, along with primates and other protected wildlife. The alleged trafficker arrested in the seizure claimed to have purchased the dead animals from markets in Cameroon to sell in Nigeria.
Within Africa, hornbills are part of the fetish trade: they’re thought to have spiritual, magical or medicinal powers. Across many African cultures, these birds are associated with a wide range of cultural beliefs, thought to protect against evil spirits, lightning and drought, and believed to help people foresee the future. Others consider them to be a bad omen, signifying death, loss and destruction.
West Africa, a hub for African hornbill trade
The study found that Cameroon exported one-quarter of all hornbills coming into the U.S., followed by Tanzania, Senegal, Guinea, South Africa, the DRC and Zimbabwe. East African birds dominated the trade between 1999 and 2004, but the trend then shifted to Central African hornbills. Since 2021, most have come from Cameroon and the DRC.
Cameroon has a thriving illegal bushmeat trade, where mammals, reptiles and birds, including hornbills, are widely sold. In a 2024 study, Arcilla and her colleagues found that just six years earlier, hunters sold whole birds, which were eaten or used as fetishes. Now, nine out of 10 hunters hunt hornbills strictly for their heads, targeting species with large casques.
But it’s the middlemen and traders further along the supply chain who make the real money, not the hunters in local communities, said Colin Jensen, a research biologist who worked in Cameroon with Arcilla. His surveys found species with large casques were vanishing from the forests.
Hunters, too, recognize that the birds are growing rare. When researchers interviewed them, they said they now need to travel greater distances to find hornbills to kill.
Between 2008 and 2023, China and Indonesia topped the list of countries with the most seizures of illegally trafficked Asian hornbills. The researchers say these countries may also be importing African hornbills since the consumers are the same, although the exact scale of trade into Asia is unknown.
Anya Dabite, a Cameroonian conservationist who also collaborated with Arcilla, said he believes transnational wildlife traders, mostly from China, are behind the demand for hornbill heads in Cameroon. He said hunters had told him they were handsomely paid by Chinese buyers to hunt these birds. As China-Cameroon trade relations have strengthened in recent years, there’s been an increasing presence of Chinese nationals in the country.
There’s circumstantial evidence that points to demand from China. Dabite’s hornbill surveys around Mount Nlonako Wildlife Reserve, which he said has a significant Chinese presence, showed a marked decline in hornbill species with large casques. In contrast, he said, areas around Ebo Wildlife Reserve, which doesn’t have as many Chinese residents, has a healthy population of the birds.
Online trade presents a worrying trend
Hornbills are increasingly being sold online, with listings on eBay, Etsy, Facebook and Instagram, despite these platforms touting policies explicitly banning the sale of wildlife or their parts and products. Arcilla and her colleagues spotted 505 listings, including 824 African hornbills from 29 species, on various online marketplaces between 2010 and 2024.
Most of the advertised products were hornbill heads, but live birds, taxidermied specimens, skeletons, skins, feathers, snuff bottles and feather fans were also recorded. Nearly 70% of the advertised birds were African forest hornbills. Sellers pointed out that international trade isn’t restricted since these species aren’t listed on CITES, so prospective buyers needn’t worry about the legality of their purchase.
Most of the advertised products were hornbill heads, but live birds, taxidermied specimens, skeletons, skins, feathers, snuff bottles and feather fans were also recorded. Nearly 70% of the advertised birds were African forest hornbills. Sellers pointed out that international trade isn’t restricted since these species aren’t listed on CITES, so prospective buyers needn’t worry about the legality of their purchase.
Live birds sold online were often labeled as “captive bred.” That’s unlikely, researchers say, as hornbills don’t survive or breed well in captivity, and there aren’t any known breeding centers in Africa.
In recent years, the online trade in wildlife has continued to skyrocket, threatening many species. “[Online] market demand from international buyers is potentially unlimited and can thus easily deplete and wipe out local hornbill populations, many of which are known or suspected to be declining,” said Shan Su, a researcher from IBPC and co-author of a study on the hornbill trade in Cameroon.
Experts say African hornbills urgently need protection
As the data trickle in about this trade, experts say these ecologically vital birds must be protected. “Adding African hornbills to CITES would be a crucial step in combating the growing trade,” Jensen said. “It would introduce much-needed oversight and provide a legal framework to monitor and regulate international trade.” A CITES listing has been a lifeline for many species, including pangolins, elephants and Asian hornbills.
Eight West African countries have submitted a joint proposal to list all African forest hornbill species (from the genera Ceratogymna and Bycanistes) on CITES Appendix II. This proposal will be considered at the upcoming CITES Conference of the Parties (CoP) in November, where 185 countries will vote whether to regulate commercial trade in certain species. An Appendix II listing wouldn’t prohibit international trade, but would limit it, requiring permits that would be recorded in the CITES database. This would help scientists analyze the scale of the legal trade.
Researchers say this alone won’t save hornbills, and that the countries where these birds are found must regulate hunting and better monitor populations. Currently, only Senegal and Djibouti ban hornbill hunting; 12 others require permits for hunting, while 13 offer no legal protection at all. It’s important to train and empower local researchers to study hornbills and to fund such research, conservationists say.
Online marketplaces and social media platforms — emerging hubs of the wildlife trade — must take greater responsibility for the content on their sites. Rather than depending on users to report wildlife listings, these companies need to step up efforts to detect wildlife listings and take them down, Su said. Increased international cooperation and enforcement of existing regulations are critical, as is better training for customs officials tasked with intercepting wildlife products, conservationists say.
But in the short term, Kemp said she’s pinning her hopes on the birds receiving CITES protection. If the proposal isn’t ratified, it will be a long wait before the next meeting. That could prove tragic for these birds.
“If we fail at this CoP… I’m worried four years from now, it’s too late,” she said.
Banner image: The yellow-casqued hornbill, a vulnerable species, was one of the most widely traded African hornbill species. Conservationists say the current levels of sales are unsustainable for a bird that’s long-lived, reproduces slowly, and plays a crucial role in Africa’s forests as a key seed disperser.
Spoorthy Raman is a staff writer at Mongabay, covering all things wild with a special focus on lesser-known wildlife, the wildlife trade, and environmental crime.
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Study shines light, and raises alarm, over online trade of West African birds
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