Wildlife traffickers are increasingly targeting critically endangered maleo birds from coastal Indonesia for the international exotic pet trade, according to a recent study.
In 2024, enforcement agencies recorded three separate seizures totaling 25 live juvenile maleo birds (Macrocephalon maleo) en route to or within India. The ground-dwelling, black-and-white birds are endemic to the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Just 4,000 to 7,000 breeding pairs are thought to remain there due to severe habitat destruction and egg poaching, reports Mongabay’s Spoorthy Raman.
While all international commercial trade in maleos is banned under Indonesian law and CITES, the global wildlife trade convention, the new study marks the first documented evidence of the species entering illicit international commerce.
Researchers found that trafficking syndicates recruited couriers including young couples, families with children, and a single mother. They were offered paid holidays and cash to carry the birds through international transit hubs in Jakarta, Mumbai, and Bangkok to avoid detection.
“All evidence we have so far points to a domestic pet market in India,” said study co-author Uttara Mendiratta, a wildlife trade researcher in India and consultant with the Wildlife Trust of India. “We also see social media posts where influencers or celebrities are seen with rare wildlife as pets.”
“We were not expecting to see maleos because we have not seen them in international trade before,” said lead author Chris Shepherd, senior conservation advocate at the U.S.-based Center for Biological Diversity. Shepherd said that while 25 birds may seem like a small number, removing them from a rapidly shrinking population is “quite damaging,” especially given the high mortality rates during transit.
All of the confiscated birds were juveniles. Maleo chicks hatch from eggs buried on sun-warmed sandy beaches and quickly disperse individually into dense rainforest at night, so the researchers say it’s highly unlikely that all the birds were randomly caught in the wild.
“It is therefore almost certain that the maleos in these shipments, which appeared to be of similar age, would have originated from one of several maleo ‘conservation’ projects in which eggs are hatched out in hatcheries,” said Marcy Summers, director and co-founder of the Alliance for Tompotika Conservation, a U.S.-based group focused on Sulawesi wildlife. Summers said that illegally selling chicks raised for conservation is feeding an international appetite for live maleos and creates severe risks for wild populations.
Researchers are urging authorities in Indonesia, India, and Thailand to boost airport surveillance, crack down on potential hatchery corruption, and establish formal mechanisms to potentially repatriate confiscated birds back to Sulawesi for release into the wild.
Read the full story by Spoorthy Raman here.
Banner image: Maleos are critically endangered, and poaching for the pet trade is the biggest threat to their survival. Image © Jason Alexander via iNaturalist (CC BY 4.0).
