Parrots for sale: The internet's role in illicit trade

The African grey parrot is endangered and it is illegal to sell them

        Row after row of thin barred cages hold brilliantly coloured birds whose screeches fill the air with a deafening noise.

  Faiz Ahmed sits at a desk, oblivious, as he turns to a team of undercover BBC News journalists.

He's busy with his business of importing and selling birds.

It's a popular line of trade in Bangladesh, where he's based, particularly among people with connections and money to invest. 

      The conversation had started over the purchase of legal captive-bred parrots, but turned to a particular species, the African grey.

 Wild grey parrots are good. Many people are breeding from wild ones," he says.

It is illegal under international law to sell wild-caught African greys, which are endangered and on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List. However, Faiz calmly told us how he could evade checks at customs.

"It's hard to get import permission for grey parrots. There's another species almost the same as the grey parrots, Timneh parrots. It's possible to get permission for Timneh parrots and import grey parrots instead," he said.

On the surface, the illicit wildlife trade is as it always has been - secret shipment routes, forged customs documents, and covert warehouses.

But how we've arrived at Faiz's establishment is a sign of how drastically the illicit trade in endangered plants and animals has transformed.

He has been openly advertising the sale of endangered birds and animals across social media.

The internet has made the setting up of trade routes much easier, and buyers and sellers can communicate with each other much more easily than before," says Simone Haysom, from Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (Gitoc).

Some time after the initial meeting with Faiz, he told our reporters that the Bangladesh authorities were getting stricter, so he could still import the birds but couldn't take responsibility for them at airport customs.

When Faiz was approached by the BBC's producer in the UK he first denied having offered to trade wild-caught African greys. He then claimed he didn't know their import and trade was now illegal, pointing out that there are many such sellers in Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Rowan Martin, of the World Parrot Trust, says: "More and more people want exotic birds and animals as pets - driven by a desire to own something unusual.

"It was an African grey parrot after all that taught Dr Dolittle how to speak all the languages of the other animals, so it goes back a long way.

"This is driving wildlife trafficking, not least because wild-caught animals are often cheaper than those bred in captivity."