Parrots are as valuable as cocaine.

Za "Time" from Hertogenbosch, Belgrade and Conakry

They say that it's hard for jaccoes to mate behind bars, but Khalid Reja (67) just smiles at that. In his kitchen, in a quiet part of Zemun, five pairs of these gray African parrots, which are on the verge of extinction in nature, are squawking in cages. Last year, eleven young hatched at Reža.

"They are emotional, like people. They have to like each other and then they don't part for the rest of their lives. You just have to judge who likes who," says this bird seller.

The house of Khalid Reja, whom everyone calls Akan, smells like birdseed. In the office there is a bucket with worms, in the display case there are countless bottles with medicines and vitamins. Because the birds that Reža sometimes orders from Africa arrive exhausted and hungry for protein. "It is very important to know, just by the appearance of the excrement, which vitamins they lack", says this man with a pleasant voice, while the sounds of parrots and the news from the television mix.

Once upon a time, everything was different. In the 1960s, as a child, Reža watched the Zemun mangupas catch birds and sell them in the markets. Nobody cared about it then. Today, his house is a well-known Belgrade address where exotic species can be legally obtained. From tiny finches to impressive cockatoos.

Heath is a long-lived gray parrot who can talk. "Sometimes they shout at the dogs to go outside. They learned that from me", says Reža.

Jaco can be purchased for eight hundred or one thousand euros. In the Netherlands or Germany, customers are willing to pay twice as much. In African countries like Tanzania, which banned the export of birds a few years ago, the poor catch gray parrots in the wild and sell them to wholesalers for a few dollars.

The fierce price difference makes birds a commodity sometimes more profitable than drugs. The United Nations and Interpol estimate that between $7 billion and $23 billion is turned over annually on the black market in wild animal and plant species.

According to the claims of Western investigators, one branch of the smuggling of exotic birds goes through the Balkan route, via Serbia. To chirp imprisoned in cages in rich European countries, some are almost exterminated in Africa. Then they take uncertain smuggling routes through Serbia. According to Europol estimates, half of the smuggled birds do not survive the journey.

"There is smuggling everywhere," says Reža. He knows that many birds from Serbia cross the border. "Obviously the smugglers have their own schemes, I have no idea what."

"Vreme" talked to traders, police officers, experts and numerous sources in Guinea, Serbia and the Netherlands in order to reconstruct the smuggling route. When asked about it, one is often met with silence and impatient looks; unlike drugs, weapons or people, bird smuggling is of little interest. There are too many people who earn quite well in the shadows, so they should stay in the shadows.

photo: ingrid gerkam

BUYERS DON'T ASK WHERE THE BIRDS CAME FROM

A rainy September day last year: thousands of people flock to the giant halls in the central Dutch city of Hertogenbosch. A rhythmic chorus of hundreds of bird species bounces off the neon-lit vaults. The birds are packed into miniature cages or wooden boxes. It is AviMarkt, which advertises itself as the largest bird fair in Europe, with a tradition of more than seven decades.

In the Netherlands, more than two million birds are kept as pets, in the whole EU it is almost fifty million birds. Many are not satisfied with canaries and pigeons.

photo: ingrid gerkam

"People always want something that someone else has, as big and as expensive as possible. Like with cars," says Harald Garetsen, as he walks among cages with finches, toucans, lovebirds and rare gray parrots. "Buyers don't care much about where the birds come from."

Garretsen has been fighting windmills all his life. For four decades he has been at war with wildlife smugglers, today as an inspector of the Dutch Consumer Protection Agency. In Hertogenbosch, he is looking for illegal birds and forged papers. He puts on his glasses and looks at the legs - the ring can only be properly put on birds, if it is subsequently put on adult birds, Garetsen recognizes it. A year ago he seized a bunch of birds here.

The inspector knows that many birds are golden cocks for criminals, especially if they are on the protected list. A pair of some large parrots, capable of mating, can cost one hundred thousand euros each.

photo: ingrid gerkam

"Songbirds are acquired for their colors, song and how rare they are considered. It is a status symbol in Europe. You're cool if you have a rare bird," Chris Shepard, director of the international society for the study and protection of wild species "Monitor", tells us. "No one wants a bird that was in fashion last year, but something new all the time," says Shepherd.

FRESH BLOOD WANTED

In the European Union, only the sale of birds bred in captivity is allowed, and the import is completely prohibited. The 2005 ban was a response to bird flu, which is once again raging across the continent these days. In the last fifteen months, about fifty million chickens and other birds have been killed in Europe in order to suppress the infection.

"But the demand for exotic birds is still there," says Inspector Garetsen. "That means two things: trade goes illegal and prices skyrocket."

The loophole in the regulations bothers José Alfaro Moreno, who leads the fight against wildlife smuggling at the European police agency Europol. Moreno's team is housed in a gray building in Scheveningen, a district of The Hague famous for its international justice and detention facilities.

"Breeders constantly need fresh blood. They cannot mate the offspring of the same birds, because that would be sibling mating.” This is where, as Moreno says, smuggled specimens come into play, they are fresh blood. "Breeders take the proper papers of the deceased bird and assign them to a new, smuggled bird."

Their young will then get a ring on their leg, and no one will be able to prove their origin. "This is practically how to wash contraband. "Birds become legal in the EU," says Moreno.

Dutch inspector Garretsen states that smugglers are particularly interested in countries close to the EU, such as Serbia, Albania, Turkey, or formerly Ukraine. He says that an important route goes from Africa to Belgrade, and then across the Hungarian border.

"As far as we know, couriers usually transport animals in vans, often with the knowledge of the border police. Also, the border between Hungary and Serbia is long, with a large forest. The foresters know the roads, and their salaries are not too high - they earn extra money by helping the smuggling of birds", claims Garetsen.

Senior Europol official Moreno says the same and adds that sometimes it is about shipments with thousands of birds. "The Balkans is a hotbed of bird smuggling," he says, "this is about organized crime."

THE BALKAN ROUTE FOR EVERYONE

In a witch doctor's cafe, a person from the prosecutor's office is sitting who does not want her name to appear in the newspaper. He says that the police in Serbia have so far managed to intercept small-scale animal smuggling here and there, but they have never seized, say, an entire truck, nor have they found evidence of organized crime.

"Serbia is a transit country for all kinds of smuggling. The same route is used for human and animal smuggling. But, of course, people are much more important, and almost no one cares about crime that affects wild animals", says this source.

"I estimate that one out of a thousand cases of smuggling of wild species actually end up in court. Mainly because the police don't collect enough evidence, or don't have enough resources and knowledge to deal with that crime. It is a specific field, and we have too few experts", adds this informed interlocutor.

Nebojsa Vasić understands those words well. This man from the Anti-Smuggling Department of the Customs Administration has seen everything in recent years. Especially birds, which he says are the most commonly smuggled animals.

"Live birds are kept in inhumane conditions. Once, it was January, we found eight parrots in boxes stuck under the car. Or they pack the birds in potato sacks and put them in jackets, pants, under seats, under bags in the trunk... Many birds do not survive", says Vasić.

But after the "Balkan birds" affair - when it was discovered in Italy at the beginning of the century that tens of thousands of poached birds from Serbia ended up on the plates of restaurants there - there were no big catches for the police and customs. "We catch both domestic citizens and foreigners, there are no rules. "We often catch middlemen and drivers," says Vasić.

Several interlocutors of "Vremen" draw attention to the sales fairs of small animals or birds, the largest of which are held in Subotica, Pančevo, and Požarevac. Buyers can often be seen there whose cars have foreign license plates - indicating that the birds will be smuggled out of the country.

For this criminal trade, you need to know the goods well. Four years ago, all six large black cockatoos were stolen from a private zoo in Kolut, north of Sombor - right next to the borders with Hungary and Croatia. The owner estimated the value at a total of 80.000 euros. Because zoos in Europe that have these impressive birds can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

HOW A POLICE OFFICER CAN RECOGNIZE A BIRD?

Vasić and his colleagues mostly find smugglers without any papers, although there were also falsified ones. But the people from Carina are not ornithologists. Even if they were, there is no ornithologist who would be able to recognize all protected bird species at first glance. Sometimes, says Vasić, just a little red color on the tail depends on whether the bird is legal or protected.

On those occasions, he consults with colleagues from the European network EU Twix, or with the Belgrade office for the implementation of the CITES convention. That convention regulates international trade in specimens of flora and fauna, but it has a number of flaws (see box).

In Belgrade, there are only two people working on CITES, and they are at the Ministry of Environmental Protection. They issue permits for importing animals into Serbia - if the animals are not on the protected list. The Ministry did not respond to "Vremena"'s inquiry. The request for an interview was also ignored by the Veterinary Administration, which is supposed to welcome imported animals, examine them and monitor quarantine.

Several interlocutors of "Vremen" express serious doubts that birds from the protected list are entering Serbia, but that little is checked at the airport in Belgrade - where they arrive by regular and cargo planes, mainly Turkish Airlines. As some say, the Veterinary Administration nonchalantly approves the entry of animals.

"The Veterinary Administration is probably the most corrupt institution in Serbia. Regardless of whether it is about the health of the imported animals or the attitude towards stray dogs, they are completely bribed", claims one knowledgeable ornithologist.

Two other biologists say they are sometimes called by customs or the police when a shipment of birds arrives at the airport or when animals are seized. But that doesn't always happen. Sometimes they just send them photos of birds, and then in a few minutes you have to tell them what species they belong to.

Milan Ružić welcomes us at the Novi Sad office of the Society for the Protection and Study of Birds of Serbia. The irony is that there is a pet store in the basement, where tiny tigress parrots are offered for a few hundred dinars.

But Ružić is interested in larger birds, especially domestic ones, which are often caught and hunted illegally. This ornithologist says that he can recognize any European bird, but there is no question that he knows thousands of species of exotic birds, of which only 58 are protected by the CITES convention.

"Each bird in a shipment that arrives from Africa would have to have proper papers. But will the people who check the cargo at two in the morning at the Belgrade airport know how to recognize the species?", he asks. "Two birds can look very similar, and one be critically endangered and the other legal."

"Traders will always claim that the birds come from breeding. But that is not true - they steal from the nest. Especially the African gray parrot. Someone in Africa might get it for five dollars, in Serbia it is worth five hundred, and in Western Europe three times more," says Ružić.

There is practically no way to export birds to the EU from Serbia, apart from smuggling, he says. "I think it is a big organized crime involving people in high positions. Sources always tell me about people from the top of the police and army."

BIRDS ARE MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEARING FROM SERBIA

Bright parrots and large toucans scream in the Belgrade Zoo. Some of them were seized from smugglers and now, as part of the exhibition, they "work" for their food, says zoo biologist Christian Ovari.

Other confiscated animals are not part of the exhibit, but the garden cares for them until a solution is found. Namely, there is no asylum for exotic animals in Serbia, so the police and inspections send them to zoos, mostly in Belgrade and Palić.

"Sometimes half of the smuggled animals die. Smugglers pack them tightly, without water, and that leads to terrible stress", says Ovari. If they arrive alive, they are often a burden to the garden. "We can't put species that don't come from here back into the wild."

The garden on Kalemegdan is overcrowded, there is little space for the animals that are part of the exhibition. It was recently announced that in two or three years it will be transferred from its iconic place on the fortress to Ada Safari - perhaps then it will finally be accepted into the European Garden Association.

Ovari, who worked in Palić for years, knows about the smuggling route. "Border controls are not that strict. You can have anything in your trunk, and the chances would be no less than fifty percent that you would get through to Hungary with it."

"Tens of thousands of animals enter Serbia, including the African gray parrot. And then they disappear", continues Ovari. "I assume they are leaving Serbia. They are valuable genetic material for the EU market.”

photo: ingrid gerkam

Halid Reja Akan's phone rings, and a Zemun merchant comes out to deliver 2,5 kilograms of bird feed to someone. Then in the backyard he shows us his pet and star: Koki, a large white cockatoo, who has already starred in commercials and movies.

Redza remembers a safari in Tanzania with Seth, where he went to see birds in the wild. Earlier, while it was possible, he used to get gray jackets from there. But in 2016, due to the reduction of the natural fund, the Tanzanian authorities banned the export of animals that brought fat profits. Last June, it was announced that the ban would be extended to six months, in order for exporters to empty their warehouses. A real shitstorm followed, especially on Twitter, and the authorities reversed the decision a day later.

RED-CHECKED FINCHES AND BLACK-BEAKERS

Reža and other importers from Serbia still have suppliers from Africa. As this Zemunac describes, the birds are ordered from the catalogue, and the CITES enforcement office issues permits. Reja has to keep the birds in quarantine for three weeks and claims that state veterinarians visit them regularly. "Before, a lot came from Tanzania, but since they closed the export, it's Guinea and Mali," he says.

Although the Belgrade office for CITES did not provide data on who and how many birds are imported, "Vreme" has access to a detailed list of imports from Guinea. In the last three years, 35.618 birds arrived in Serbia from there - that's as much as a sixth of Guinean exports. Almost all the birds were sent to two addresses: one trader in Batajnica and one in Subotica, who uses two different companies at the same address.

Among other things, thousands of red-breasted finches and pink amaranths, miniature birds weighing only ten grams, were sent, but also several larger Senegalese night rushes and black hornbills.

They all end up on Turkish Airlines planes, where they refused to answer questions from journalists. When we introduced ourselves as potential importers of birds, and inquired about prices, this airline stated that the transport of a wooden box up to 30 kilograms costs 550 dollars between the Guinean capital of Conakry and Belgrade. And that regardless of the number of birds. Each additional kilogram costs 15 dollars.

American organization World Animal Protection in 2019, published the results of an investigation according to which Turkish Airlines was transporting endangered African gray parrots from DR Congo, Mali and Nigeria to Asia. The organization called the Turkish carrier "the first choice of poachers".

THE PRICE OF THE BIRD IS FIFTY TIMES HIGHER IN EUROPE

Five thousand kilometers separate Belgrade and Conakry, a port city on the Atlantic Ocean. A military coup was carried out here in September 2021, now the country is led by officer Mamadi Dumbuya, a former fighter of the Foreign Legion. Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world, and birds from tropical rainforests and savannas mean money.

A merchant welcomes us to a Lebanese bakery in the bustling business district of Conakry. People with deep pockets gather in the bar, birthday cakes, espresso and croissants can be ordered.

Conakry is not a cheap city, even though it is crowded with poor people - beggars crowd in front of the bakery, shopkeepers offering cigarettes, while crowded minibuses, which serve as taxis and freight forwarders, pass through the streets. On their roofs, goods for the port, from pineapples and coffee to bauxite, swing.

The trader, who does not want us to reveal his name, exports finches to Serbia on a large scale. He catches birds in the wild. "We have a lot of them," he says of the Mozambican chaises, which he sells for $1,5 apiece. In Dutch pet shops, that little yellow finch costs 75 euros – the journey is long, there are many hands and profits at stake.

He rejects accusations that his business harms nature. "The bird population is decreasing due to deforestation. They cut to build. Where I live, there used to be a forest where we caught birds, but today it's a city," he says.

"Some farmers put pesticides on crops, on rice. They say that we traders destroy the birds, but this is not true - they poison the rice, the birds die from it. We catch them alive according to established quotas. And we export to experts. We are not murderers", says this man.

However, there are those who doubt that the shipments to Europe only contain birds that are legal to send. Bela Diallo, a recently retired CITES office official in Conakry, says songbirds should be better protected anyway.

"We always had a problem at the airport," he tells us. "We have insight into the certificates for the birds, but the people at the airport and customs are not experts. Traders can put any bird they want in the trunks and send it that way."

photo: natalie bertrams

THEY HAVE KALASHNIKS, THEY HAVE NO FUEL

Pierre Camano should stand in the way with his National Brigade for the fight against crimes against flora and fauna. They are not some harmless inspection, but a group of elite soldiers with Kalashnikovs. In Kaman's office, at the Ministry of the Environment, there is a large photo of him and President Dumbuya on the wall. Both are in uniforms, the president also has sunglasses.

"It is very difficult to protect our nature," says Camano. "We are doing what we can to suppress environmental crime, but the criminals are cunning, organized and have a lot of money."

photo: natalie bertrams

Kaman's unit navigates with a stick and rope. He says that animal species in Guinea can still be saved, but it would help if the unit was more mobile. They have only six vehicles for patrolling the vast country - and that was donated from the EU. A French non-profit organization occasionally pays for their fuel.

The area of ​​Guinea is three times larger than Serbia, but only every third road is paved. The national park on the upper reaches of the Niger River is a two-day trek from Conakry. When the rainy season comes, even longer. Apart from rare birds, that park is home to chimpanzees, hippos, and elephants.

photo: natalie bertrams

Merchants involved in crime can still sleep peacefully. When we asked the merchant we met at the bakery why African birds are sold as alva, he said: “I don't know. That's what you buy. Ask your families in Europe.”

THE GAME GOES ON

In Europe, demand is not abating. Admittedly, the Dutch inspector Harald Garetsen still manages to beat windmills here and there. His patrol of the bird fair in Hertogenbosch last September – was his last at the site.

"Unfortunately, we have come to the conclusion that it is no longer financially profitable to organize another bird fair like AviMarkt", the organizers announced at the end of January. "We expect far fewer visitors and exhibitors due to European regulations on animal health. AviMarkt was an interesting exhibition precisely because of its international character."

"That's why we decided to stop while we're at our peak," the announcement added. "It is not desirable for the exhibitors and visitors, as well as for us, for the birds to be confiscated or fines to be paid because we cannot fulfill certain conditions."

The new European regulation was introduced in 2021, but the Dutch gave everyone a break until the end of last year. Of these, diseases that can be transmitted to humans, such as bird flu, are under special surveillance. This means that the birds must have veterinary certificates - which makes it difficult for smugglers.

But there is no doubt that the game goes on as long as millions of people want the chirping of colorful birds in their rooms and gardens. Demand begets supply, smuggling routes are beaten, many are bribed to turn their heads. Only small fish fall.

"Transporters and those who catch animals in the wild are most often arrested", Chris Shepard from the International Society for the Study and Protection of Wild Species reminds us of the rule for every smuggler. "People who are well networked and run the whole thing, they never get arrested. And the end buyers are rarely arrested, because with them everything is arranged so that the bird appears to be legal. It's hard to prove it isn't."

This text was written with support journalismfund.eu.