Rare Javan Green Magpie At Chester Zoo In Extinction Prevention Attempt

The Javan Green magpie is a Critically Endangered bird, bird endemic to West Java and little is known on the biology of this species in the wild, made all the more difficult due to the increasing difficulty in finding wild individuals.

According to a TRAFFIC Report: "Illegal harvest and trade in birds is widespread in Indonesia, with lax enforcement enabling markets to persist, some of them huge in size and scale, whose traders openly sell protected and illegally-sourced birds, with little or no fear of legal actions being taken against them." "This paper illustrates the large scale of the trade, with 19,036 birds of 206 species being counted during the survey carried out over a three day period in the three largest bird markets in Jakarta." As long as these bird markets exist in their present form, illegal trade will persist, threatening the survival of Indonesian birds and undermining conservation efforts.