Python Seeks To Save Parrot From Extinction
8/6/99
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Title: Python Seeks To Save Parrot From Extinction
Source: Reuters Limited
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 6, 1999
Byline: Lyndsay Griffiths
LONDON (Reuters) - Monty Python's John Cleese made millions laugh
with his ``Dead Parrot'' sketch but Friday he backed a global action
plan to keep more of them alive.
It was Cleese, all those years ago, who angrily confronted a pet shop
owner with a parrot nailed to a perch that had ``ceased to be'' and
who now returns to the fray to make sure other birds don't follow
suit.
Comparing a stuffed parrot in a tree -- ``It's popped its clogs
(died). It's an ex-parrot'' -- with a live, singing version called
Groucho, a jubilant Cleese proclaims: ``Now that's what I call a live
parrot.''
Cleese made the ``Live Parrot'' video, to be distributed worldwide,
to mark Friday's World Parrot Day and help bring back the flamboyant
bird from the brink of extinction.
``The Parrot Action Plan is the first ever attempt to launch a global
strategy to save them,'' said the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), a
British conservation group.
WWF, along with the World Parrot Trust, which breeds rare birds in
temperate southwest England, said almost one in three species of
parrots was on the brink of extinction due to the pet trade and
disappearance of the world's forests.
``Habitat destruction and a rapacious trade threatens the world's
most magnificent birds with imminent extinction,'' said Dr Paul
Toyne, conservation officer for the WWF.
``The parrot action plan will play a vital role in helping forge
action to save them from the brink.''
The groups found that 27 percent of the world's 330 species of
parrots are already on the verge of dying out, making them the most
endangered bird family on Earth.
``Over 50 percent of the world's forest have now been lost and the
global trade in parrots is a significant part of the $5 billion a
year international wildlife trade,'' said the WWF in a statement.
``For every bird that survives the trading process, at least four
will die along the way.''
Due to hunting and habitat destruction, at least 27 species have
already died out, including the Cuban macaw, the Seychelles parakeet
and the U.S. Carolina parrot.
There are 39 threatened species in the Asia-Pacific region, with this
week's resurgence of forest fires in Indonesia increasing the risk to
local birds.
Latin America and the Caribbean region contain 47 threatened parrot
species with Brazil's Spix macaw holding the title of most endangered
parrot in the wild.
One solitary male roams its natural habitat, and the action groups
said bad news for birds meant bad news for humans too.
``If we save the parrots, we might yet save ourselves,'' said Mike
Reynolds, director of the World Parrot Trust.
``We need the rainforests as much as the parrots do. The rainforests
are the lungs of the planet. They are essential for human health.
These forests also provide vital medicines with many more yet to be
discovered.''