By Wendy Huntbatch
Co-Founder of F.L.O.P.R.S. (For the Love Of Parrots Refuge Society)

February 24, 2007
Presented to the SPCA Annual General Meeting, Nanaimo BC

Looking in the “Pets For Sale” column in the newspaper, you will find a huge number of dogs and cats on offer, many of them “free to a good home”. In all the years that humane societies have preached the importance of “spay and neuter” you might think that this column would be just a memory by now. There are two reasons for this lack of success. The first is that there are always people willing to make a dollar on the back of a “cute” or “exotic” living being. The second is that there are always devoted individuals or community groups willing to take responsibility for the same living being who has outlived the welcome at a home that, at the moment of purchase, could not imagine life without their new family addition.

These same groups of devoted animal lovers end up being responsible for ending the lives of animals for whom they cannot find a home. All this is done quietly and with dignity behind closed doors, so that the irresponsible feel no guilt. Even with “No Kill” policies at many shelters, more than 400,000 dogs and cats are killed in humane shelters in Canada every year. There are simply no homes available for these “excess” animals – and yet people keep on breeding them for money. What would happen if these shelters went out of business because people could no longer bear the heartbreak of having to kill another innocent animal?

Do you think this stops with dogs and cats? Think again!

Follow up:

At the World Parrot Refuge in Coombs BC, we provide a Home For Life for previously owned pet parrots. We house hundreds of birds at the Refuge, and the number increases daily. I could lecture in great detail to explain why these highly intelligent living beings need the security of a permanent flock, and why they need to fly and not be trapped in a barred prison, eating foods that they would never encounter in their natural habitat. Instead, we have quietly taken on the responsibility of caring for these birds. Most people are fully aware of dog and cat shelters and the need for them. Very few people have any idea that there is a need for parrot shelters. In fact there are a number of parrot refuges in every province in Canada. Most of these organizations operate under a “re-homing” policy whereby they take in previously owned pet parrots and then place them into foster care with volunteers until a suitable home becomes available. This process can be very successful, but in many cases it is just another turn on the “pet-go-around” because parrots have a life expectancy ranging up to five times that of a dog or cat. Human lives tend to change many times during such a lengthy period. However, these sanctuaries extend the promise of life to these birds instead of killing them to get rid of the “excess”.

People are fascinated by parrots: their beauty, intelligence, and particularly their ability to communicate in the language of the caregiver. Even though most people think carefully about the addition of a parrot to their household and some do lengthy research, they are rarely ever prepared for what they get. The majority of people who surrender parrots to our Refuge state categorically that if they had known what they were letting themselves in for, they would never have bought a parrot. Some previous owners of parrots have formed an ever-growing army working to discourage other people from buying parrots.

A first encounter with a forcibly weaned baby parrot brings out nurturing emotions in just about anyone. A desperately underage baby - one that should still live in a tree nest being fed by its mother, one that craves the warm closeness of another living being and makes baby sounds - is a hook that many people cannot resist. Money quickly changes passes from wallets to cash registers. However, after a year of having an emotionally disabled bird pressing its body close at every waking moment, most people become disenchanted. They try teaching the bird to enjoy spending time in a cage “for its own good”. In return, the lonely bird screams loud and long. Most parrots are sold for the second time in their lives before they are two years old. The second and subsequent owners never experience the heady baby days of needy love: they get a bird who screams for attention and drives them out of their mind or the neighbourhood: whichever comes first.

Most people, used to feeding dogs and cats with prepared food, likewise feed a parrot prepared parrot food. Dogs and cats have had hundreds of generations for their gut to accept the prepared foods available to them. Parrots are either wild-caught or one generation removed from wild-caught, there have had no time for their digestive system to physically evolve. 80% of wild-caught birds die from starvation before they reach their destination, simply because they do not recognize the product in front of them as food. Hand-fed babies recognize the foods humans offer them from the beginning. Their eyes recognize it, however, their gut does not. Most pet parrots suffer from malnutrition and extreme lack of sunshine. Even budgies and cockatiels who have been bred for hundreds of generations in captivity rarely live to their life expectancy. How many budgies do you know that live for 25 years; or cockatiels, for 30 years? The signs of malnutrition are obvious: extreme feather plucking, self mutilation, cancer and congestive heart failure - all occurring in comparatively young birds. These signs are so emotionally destructive to most humans that when the owner finds they cannot correct the behaviours, they pass the bird on to another home in the hope that the problem will go away in a different environment.

Moving from home to home and sometimes to a sanctuary where a parrot can live out the rest of its life with others of its own kind is the best these birds can expect. So many refuges open their doors, relying on loving and compassionate volunteers who do all in their power to make life good for these parrots. Parrots come pouring in with little if any financial support. Refuges become overburdened financially and physically, closing down due to lack of volunteers, funds and the utter burn-out of their founders. So far, this year, two Canadian sanctuaries have arrived at this stage. These are larger facilities that have been established for many years. Their re-homing policy has failed because of a shortage of funds, volunteers, and homes. The volunteers' foster homes have filled to overflowing, and prospective adoptive homes in the area are already full.

With the closure of these sanctuaries, what will happen to unwanted birds in those areas now? We house over 600 parrots in our Refuge alone and each day receive emails begging for space for more. The situation has nowhere near reached its peak. Increasingly, individual or even collections of parrots are surrendered to us when the senior family member who once lovingly cared for them is no longer present or able to do so, and other family members are too busy to take on the responsibility. Large numbers of parrots were imported 30 to 35 years ago and sold to people whose children had left home. These talking parrots filled the lives of “empty nesters”. It doesn’t take much figuring to realize that these are the homeless birds now flooding sanctuaries across Canada. During the last 25 years, people also found that not only could they keep these birds alive, they could reproduce out of an instinctive desperation to save their own species from extinction. The prices were high and it became a fashion statement to have such a bird in your home. Today, households are getting smaller and often both parents need to work to support a family, yet breeders manage to find families who will pay large sums of money to cage a bird in their home. The majority of these birds will be looking for sanctuary space in the next 10 years. Where will they go?

It costs $10 per week to care for a parrot in a good quality sanctuary. It doesn’t sound like much until you multiply it by 600 or more. How does society cope with such a huge problem? Should sanctuaries just keep the birds that people are prepared to financially support and kill the “excess”? Whose responsibility is this? A large number of the parrot species in sanctuaries are critically endangered in the wild due to poaching for pets, habitat destruction, and now the death penalty due to fear of the appearance of the H5N1 virus in countries where they were once populous and are now close to extinction.

Importation of wild-caught parrots into Canada needs to be stopped now. Breeding of parrots as pets should definitely be subject to a recycling tax, if not stopped completely. The cost to the medical system of having birds with powder down in human homes is doubtless very high. I have hypersensitivity pneumonitis (bird keeper's lung) and we have taken in many cockatoos and African Greys from other people diagnosed with this debilitating condition. Allergies to feathers and powder down birds are well documented. “When you can't breathe, nothing else matters”, is a commonly heard phrase at our Refuge when people surrender a parrot.

The World Parrot Refuge has lots of experience with these birds and our caregivers are more than capable of caring for these previously owned pet parrots. We know where the problem starts and what governments need to do to change this. We have educational materials to teach people the facts and the problems associated with keeping parrots in human homes. What we do not know is how to financially support this enormous burden. It would be criminal to slaughter extremely endangered species and we will not be a party to this solution. We cannot abandon parrots to the fate our society has imposed on them. However, where will the human, material and financial resources come from to support them, and those homeless parrots yet to come?

Please click on the thumbnails below to learn how you can help some special birds have a home for life through our "Virtual Adoption" program!

Birds who are now partly sponsored, thank you!

Birds who are now fully sponsored, thank you!

"The World Parrot Refuge is a true sanctuary where parrots live out their lives in a loving, spacious and happy environment under the guidance of extraordinarily caring people. The many visitors destined to pass through the refuge will come to understand that parrots are not toys or trophies, but beings with needs and emotions as real as our own."

– Rosemary Low (author of more than 30 books on parrots)

"This is, in a word, a great place and these miraculous creatures deserve no less, but few places can deliver it this well. It is, indeed, 'world class'."

– Stewart Metz (author and Director of the Indonesian Parrot Project), after his visit at the Grand Opening of the Refuge on August 13, 2005.