THE RED TAIL
STING...
Born of the need to plug the gap between conservation in law and exploitation in practice, the Environmental Investigation Agency uses inside information, internal connections and good old dangerous detective work to help deliver wildlife-trade villains to justice. Undercover agent Dave Currey tells the tale of a typical EIA operation–the Ghana/Ivory Coast border, the African Grey (or redtail parrot), the re-export racket and the high class hotel room with a hidden camera and a parade of smugglers.
The dug out canoe was barely discernible, sunk beneath the brown, leafy swamp water. But that’s the way dug-outs are kept when they’re not in use, and our guide hauled it up easily and, with a section of raffia palm, bailed it out. In a few minutes the three of us and the guide were floating across the swamp. I was almost afraid to breathe for fear of losing balance and causing us to capsize. As the sun dipped behind the palms we could hear the parrots coming— first the pairs returning from a day’s feeding in the forest, then the groups of five or six chattering to each other as they circled over their roost. They were African Grey Parrots, their red tails flashing in the dying sunlight, and we were in Ghana to investigate an international scheme to trade large numbers of them for foreign currency.
The two hour walk back through the forest hampered by darkness and rain, but we felt exhilarated by the memory of the wild parrots flying free in the swamp. The last Westerners to visit this swamp had been a study group preparing a report for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Their conclusion after seeing this spectacle was that the parrot population was healthy enough for trade in them to be resumed: 4,500 could be taken from the wild each year as long as there were further regular studies.
We had been invited here by the Ghanaian government because the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) had been investigating the bird trade for the past seven years . Clive and I and Pete Knights, EIA’s bird campaigner, had worked undercover in Europe, North and South America, and other parts of Africa. Gerry Penguse, Ghana’s chief game and wildlife officer knew our work and had asked us to investigate the illegal export of Ghanaian parrots to the Ivory Coast. As a result of the CITES report it had now been recommended that Ghana reopen its parrot trade, which had been closed since 1986. Gerry and others in the government believed the first illegal trade had to be checked out and so he contacted us.
We started out the investigation at the western border with the Ivory Coast, one of the known smuggling routes for Grey Parrots. Our first few days were spent talking to people in Eluba, and gently spreading the word that we were interested in buying birds. This enlivened the slow pace of life there, and we must have paddled across the Tano River to the Ivory Coast on at least eight different occasions. If nothing else, the two-minute journey in the dugout demonstrated the ease of smuggling between the two countries.
After about a week, a hotel worker brought us a bird-trapper named Philip, who had an African Grey Parrot in a box. He had heard of us and wanted to sell it to us. The hapless creature screeched as the cardboard box was opened, and then leapt to the floor and huddled under a chair. We told Philip of our keen interest in seeing how the birds were trapped. We arranged to meet later.
Because of torrential downpours and the general absence of urgency in the local place of life, it took two more days before our patience paid off and we found ourselves following forest paths to see how the parrots were caught. Philip’s trap consisted of a tree, pegged up the trunk so he could climb easily, and two tame parrots. Long sticks, tipped with a strong glue derived from tree sap, were placed in the top of the tree. One parrot– the call bird– was tied to another stick near to the glued ones. The other parrot, the ‘teaser,’ stayed with Philip in a simple hide halfway down the tree. When wild parrots, hearing this, would assume that food was around and come closer to see. The trap was set at first light.
We had been keeping quiet for so long that when the bird suddenly landed, it came as a surprise. Covered in glue, it called out repeatedly in alarm. Parrots were passing overhead and Philip froze, waiting for another bird to land, but they kept on flying. By now, I realized that the distressed bird wasn’t even a parrot. It was a Kingfisher, with no value to Philip—part of the cruel wastage that is always an inevitable by-product of the wild-bird trade. Philip pulled the Kingfisher from the stick and threw it 10 meters to the ground. As an assistant picked the bird up and tried to remove the glue by plucking out its feathers, it called in alarm and became increasingly bedraggled. The last time we saw the Kingfisher, it was huddling in the shadows where it would probably die of thirst and starvation.
We hadn’t wanted Philip to catch parrots just because we were there, and so we told him that we weren’t bird traders ourselves; but now it was time to introduce the notion that what we wanted was to find a local trader and buy from him. A casual conversation with a local mechanic led us to the Ghanaian town of Aiyinasi and a parrot middleman, Christian Mark.
It took several meetings and presentation of fake traders’ cards for him to be persuaded to talk openly. Lured by the promise of money and the prospect of selling us hundreds of parrots, he claimed to have "important friends" who could help with formalities and he explained the routes out of Ghana to the Ivory Coast. He guessed that as many as 20,000 Grey Parrots a year were smuggled out through the Ivory Coast, and a further 13,000 through Togo. He explained that some parrots he had hoped to sell us had already been bought and taken to Togo. Then one of his friends arrived. "This is him from Game and Wildlife," Mark told us. James Ohemeng, assistant game warden in charge of the local national park, sat at the next table. Christian Mark was clearly well connected.
We discussed our wish to buy parrots illegally, and I asked if the proposed legal quota would make it hard to get the quantity we wanted. "No, no," Ohemeng said. "Every rule there is an exception. Once there is a permit system, there must be a system for everything to go through. If they lift the ban, it will be easier."
Our hidden camera whirred on silently, lapping hours of information---- names of Ghanaian, South African and American traders, smuggling routes through the Ivory Coast’s capital Abidjan, and quantities of birds sent there.
"Let me give you somebody’s name for when you get to the Ivory Coast," Mark interrupted. "At the airport, Mr. Aman, he can lead you and get some papers. The Ivory Coast is not a member of CITES but claims to implement the convention anyway. It was obvious where we had to go next.
Our introduction to the Ivory Coast— after our bus dumped us in a small town just across the border— included a flight between our taxi driver and a rival one, who tried to slash our drivers’ tires. Our driver sped off with the rival still spread-eagled across our windscreen. When one of his tires blew out an hour later, we had to lift the vehicle manually while he changed the wheel.
Our impressions of the Ivory Coast gave us all a sense of foreboding. The contrast between Accra’s friendly small restaurants and unthreatening streets and Abidjan’s crumbling Manhattan-like skyline was matched by a general mood of depression and recession. Travel-weary and apprehensive, we booked into a good hotel to act out our roles as wealthy traders, although the receptionist was not happy with our insistence that all three of us share one room.
Our first job was to find Mr. Aman. At the airport we learned that he now worked for a shipping company, even though he was still the authority on transporting birds. Our presence was already becoming known, and a bird exporter named Kaba turned up to invite us to see his stock. He took us to a place not far from the airport, down a track lined with shacks—to a ramshackle shed with no windows. Inside, there were at least 150 Grey Parrots.
The conditions were appalling, hot and dusty, and I held my breath as I watched a rat crawling under one of the cages. We filmed the scene and talked to Kaba. "The redtails come from Ghana," he explained in French. "We pay the people, and they get them." He had said he could ship the birds to South Africa for us, and he was keen to do this, because he claimed that he could get permits at Abidjan airport and that there were no checks at Johannesburg airport. Other traders later told us that they sometimes described their wild birds as "captive-bred" for the South African business. This was also a way of avoiding bans that some airlines imposed on carrying wild birds.
On the second day we tracked down Aman, who---- convinced that we could bring him business— became our expert guide in the days that followed.
In most countries the bird business is run by a handful of people, and through Aman word soon reached them that British bird traders were in town. One by one, the exporters came to discuss terms with us in our hotel room, which we had fitted with a hidden camera. Time and again, they stated that the grey Parrots were from Ghana, smuggled across the border. They explained that since more than 100 airlines now refused to carry wild birds, the local Air Afrique was their only remaining carrier that could take parrots from Abidjan to Johannesburg, Paris and New York.
Smuggled Ghanaian birds increase in value when a CITES permit has been found to ‘legitimize’ them. The various scams included obtaining CITES permits from Zaire or Guinea and then using a false transit permit to pretend that the birds were only passing through the Ivory Coast. An even simpler method was to get a permit from the Ivory Coast’s CITES management authority. Aman knew the director personally and promised to get us a meeting with him. "If we can’t solve the problem [of permits]," he said, "we shall invite him somewhere else....and if he takes a little money, we shall give it to him. Then he prepares the certificate for you."
The director seemed happy to speak to us. He and Aman explained that there was a need for the Ivory Coast to improve its international image on conservation and that they were hoping to join CITES so that they could ask for a Grey Parrot quota. The scam in this case was to allow continued export of Ghanaian parrots but to tick the "captive-bred" column on the permit. The director explained that "if someone comes to see us and says, ‘Well, I’ve got 500 parrots to send that I’ve bred,’ we write ‘captive-bred’." No questions asked. Our dossier of inside information had grown considerably in Abidjan, and armed with this we beat a hasty retreat, explaining to our hosts that we were going up country for a few days’ sightseeing.
Where we were actually going was back to Ghana. In Accra, we made contact with Sam Quartey, an unlicensed wildlife trader offering birds and reptiles from Zaire, Ghana, Togo, Tanzania and Benin. We had contacted him by fax from one of our fake per companies in London, and the price list he had sent us suggested an involvement in illegal trade. And once we met Quartey, our relationship blossomed. He came again and again to our hotel room to negotiate our purchase of 600 Grey Parrots from an American dealer we had invented.
Quartey fell for the bait completely. Exporting parrots from Ghana was still illegal, but he was able to offer us Ghanaian birds with CITES permits from other countries. The birds would be smuggled to a neighboring country and ‘re-exported’ with a permit that legitimized them. Quartey considered the permits more valuable than the birds. "I have been getting my CITES [permits] from Douala, Cameroons, then Congo and Zaire, and I have more than enough. They don’t give on a quota basis— you come and they give....Now they want to introduce a quota in Zaire, but if they want to export thousands, it means that I have to use the name of five different people."
Days later, after unwittingly providing hours of tapes and other evidence through us to the game and wildlife department, Quartey was being pursued by Ghanaian security agents. He is still at large.
Before we left Ghana, Gerry Punguse welcomed us to a final discussion. We gave him our information, our impressions and our first recommendations. Our evidence showed corruption, poor enforcement, pressure from wealthy importers and a system too easily abused. Our strong recommendation was to reconsider the reopening of the parrot trade, and we promised to help put pressure on the Ivory Coast, Togo and Air Afrique to stop the export of Ghana’s redtails.
EIA’s report on this trip was offered to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, CITES, the Ghanaian government and the authorities in south Africa. The US and South Africa have now been asked by CITES to stop accepting Grey Parrots from the Ivory Coast, Togo and Benin. A campaign against the carriage of birds by Air Afrique has also been launched, but this airline has ignored all the evidence and, in the U.S., now faces 14 charges of inhumane treatment.
Ghana is reconsidering its policy on the export of any wildlife, not just birds, and Punguse has expressed his opposition to the resumption of the parrot trade. He was eventually convinced that renewed trade would fuel the illegal trade and promote corruption. Above all, he was probably convinced that effective enforcement, with adequate facilities and regular scientific surveys, would cost more than Ghana would gain from the business.
The film shot on this investigation will be made into a documentary, which will use the traders’ statements, caught by the hidden camera, to expose the activities of the international bird trade. It will question why some conservation bodies and governments use public money to promote a wildlife trade that only profits a handful of exporters and importers.
Four months after the investigation, Pete Knights accompanied Gerry Punguse to Senegal, to see the local community tourism projects there. Set up for more than 15 years, the projects have spread throughout Senegal and now provide independence and self-sufficiency to many local communities. The secret has been to let the projects grow gradually, minimizing the effect on the local people. For a few pounds, adventurous tourists can live in simple, but clean village accommodation, eat local food and see local sights. After only a few years, many villages now shun central government handouts and build their own facilities from the schemes profits.
Punguse was impressed. "What Ghana is interested in is what’s best for the parrots and what’s best for the country. The project puts in very little expenditure but it gives a future to the development of the villages in rural areas where there are parrots.... If you’re going to put $1,000 into scientific studies, you may just as well forget it, because that’s not enough for even the plane fare. If you can put that much money into eco-tourism----well, the sky’s the limit."
No doubt there are problems in any such scheme, but with the parrots in the forest rather than cages, the risks are minimal compared to the international trade. Most important, the profits go to the communities rathyer than the foreign bank accounts of a handful of wildlife traders.
MAYBE SOME TIME IN THE FUTURE
Well fed on local food, the tourists were led from the village and past the clinic by a local guide who reminded them of the importance of the fees they had paid for this unique experience. And as the sun dipped behind the palms, they could hear the birds coming.....African Grey Parrots, their red tails flashing in the dying sunlight.
AUTHOR
Dave Currey is Executive Director and co-founder of EIA. A professional photograper, he has investigated a variety of wildlife issues including the international ivory trade, and he is co-author of TO SAVE AN ELEPHANT. In 1990, he was awarded the prestigious Schweitzer Medal for his work for animal welfare.
ACTION
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) is an independent group that relies on public membership and donations. This year, it won the 1993 BVA Intervet Award for Animal welfare for its work on the wild-bird trade. For further information on its bird campaign and other work, write to: EIA, 2 Pear Tree Court, London, ECIR ODS (tel: 0171 490 7040).
This article was written for the BBC Wildlife Magazine, November 1993, and it was kindly provided to us by The World Parrot Trust. All RIGHTS RESERVED. This article may not be reproduced, in any form, without the permission of the author.
This article is reprinted with permission by the author.