The Great Acceleration (Domination without Domestication in the Grey Anthropocene, Part 1)

 

The name “African grey parrots” refers to two very similar species: timneh parrots (Psittacus timneh) and grey parrots proper, also called Congo greys (P. erithacus). The difference between these two species is not great; it’s that timnehs have a dark maroon tail and greys proper have a scarlet one (figure 1). They share a reputation as the best vocalizers of all parrots. African greys are intelligent animals who exist in lively world-making communities in the forests of west and central Africa. On the map below, the timneh species is outlined in blue to the west, and the Congo greys are outlined in red to the east (figure 2). In the forests, both types of African greys forage in flocks that are continually forming and reforming, flying long distances for a diverse diet. Their days are of long flights, with freedom to choose who to fly with and where to fly to. The social and ecological choices of foraging probably drove the evolution of their extraordinary vocal abilities. Historically, the life of a wild African grey has been noisy and negotiated.

 

It seems Africans rarely tamed or caged them before contact with Europe¹). As best we can tell, restrictions on their freedom arrived with Portuguese mariners in the fifteenth century. To them, grey parrots were marvelous birds that talked. They captured them and purveyed them to markets in Europe and the Americas. In the centuries since then, the forest spaces where greys could live unmolested and free grew smaller, while the number of individuals who lived in captivity grew larger. This species-level phase transition, from wild to captive, defines their Anthropocene. As with many other histories, global capitalism drove this transformation. But even in captivity, African greys are more than commodities; they are social beings who demand connection. People keep them as pets because of their intelligence and gregariousness. Their negotiations are now with us, and we have choices about how to live with them.

The Great Acceleration of the Grey Anthropocene

As we have seen in other histories of the Anthropocene, the effect of human domination on parrots accelerated greatly in the late twentieth century. Listen to how Anglo-American fashion influencers talked up beautiful people and beautiful birds: in 1989 the British magazine Harper & Queen described parrots of all species as “part joke, and part fable, too much character inside too much color.”² In that same year, the New York Times proclaimed them to be “the urban pet of the moment,” and “an apartment dweller’s dream” because they didn’t need to be walked and didn’t shed.³ The New Yorker in 1990 reported that they had become “the Perrier of pets.”⁴ It estimated that twenty-eight million caged parrots of all kinds lived in the United States alone (figure 3).⁵

 

It was just before this Great Acceleration of parrot keeping, in 1975, that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) started collecting data on the international parrot trade. In 1981, CITES placed the species on Appendix II and thus limited the number that could be exported from range states.⁶ Like CITES protections, the records are imperfect. CITES includes only the legal trade, and we know the illegal trade has been considerable. They do not monitor traffic within national boundaries, and they do not convey the numbers of individuals who died before export. Still, these data are useful because the undercounts are probably consistent. We can use them to identify trends in the international trade of wild-caught greys, shown in teal in the table below (figure 4). They also show the rise of international trade in captive-bred birds, shown in orange.

Data visualization designer Valerie Robbins and the statistician Nathan Atkinson used CITES records of the grey parrot trade to create an “alluvial” graph for the years 1975-2023 showing dense global networks, with many shipments passing from original exporter and importer through an intermediate reexporting country (figure 5). The visualization for the first fifteen years shows most trafficked greys originating in west Africa, with the United States (US) as the largest importer. This pattern ended when the US Wild Bird Conservation Act of 1992 made parrot imports to that country illegal.

In the wake of US restrictions, western European countries became the chief destination of grey parrot traffic during the years 1993 through 2005. Its origins also shifted, from west to central Africa. Additionally, in this period, a captive breeding industry in South Africa established that country, which is far outside the native range of wild greys, as an importer of wild birds and exporter of captive-bred birds. (Full disclosure: international observers suspected wild-caught individuals were also being laundered through South Africa.)⁷

After 2005, the eastward shift of the origins of wild-caught birds continued further into central Africa. The destination of grey parrots changed again as the European Union (EU) imposed an import ban as a provision against avian influenza.⁸ Thereafter, emerging markets in Asia took up the volume.⁹ Because of that demand and the growth of the captive breeding industry in South Africa, the number of parrots traded internationally in 2016 was larger than it had ever been.

That year was a turning point in the history of grey parrots. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) ruled that both species in the genus were endangered. Also in 2016, CITES raised both species to Appendix I, the most threatened status.¹⁰ That ruling abolished the legal trade of wild-caught greys and imposed restrictions on the trade of captive-bred birds. The dominant flow became from South Africa to west Asia. Since then, international traffic has been much reduced. Yet, observers in central Africa tell us illegal traffic continues.¹¹

Although it is an underestimate, the size of the reported trade was still considerable. CITES records show that between 1975 and 2023, 2,567,412 parrots were legally exported across international borders: 1,587,796 were wild-caught and 981,450 had been bred in captivity. ¹²

The impact on these species is unquantifiable but enormous. The most recent BirdLife International estimate of wild grey parrot populations is nearly 20 years old. In 2006, the total number of grey parrots estimated to exist in the wild was somewhere between 700,000 and 13.5 million.¹³ As for today’s numbers, we know they are simply gone from many places. A 2016 report from a Ghanaian ecologist, Nathaniel Annorbah, documented that greys had been “virtually eliminated” from that country. Unfortunately, Annorbah’s careful study is exceptional, and other regions lack similar research. Estimates today are of less than 560,000 of the erithacus species and less than 100,000 of the timneh existing anywhere in the wild.¹⁴

And how many parrots exist in captivity? The best insight comes from avicultural sources that in 2019 approximately 1.6 million greys lived as pets in the US.¹⁵ The US is only one country but may have more than the number of greys in the wild. This comparison conveys that humans have reworked the profile of these species and that we now dictate the experience of most individuals. Grey parrot species now exist under human domination and will survive only if people decide they should. It is a curious condition; they are endangered in the wild, but their existence is secure in captivity because the breeding stock is large enough to sustain a population. This is the grey parrots’ Anthropocene.

The vegan geographer Catherine Oliver has coined an evocative term to describe species that live only because humans insist upon it. Oliver’s definition of extinction is “the catastrophic interruption of entangled ecological and social life.” Yet, some species who experience that catastrophe still have biological life. To explain this tension, Oliver theorized a condition she called “The opposite of extinction.”¹⁶ Her example was Gallus gallus, the chicken, whose biological existence is now completely untethered from its native habitat. It may be possible that some greys will survive in parts of their native habitat, but like chickens, an enforced existence under human domination is the future for most of the species.

“Grey parrot species now exist under human domination and will survive only if people decide they should. It is a curious condition; they are endangered in the wild, but their existence is secure in captivity because the breeding stock is large enough to sustain a population. This is the grey parrots’ Anthropocene.“

 

Still, human domination can take different forms. Some greys will, like chickens, spend their entire lives in commercial facilities, kept for the value of their reproduction. Others will live as companions with people in their homes. But these pet keepers have a problem: the pet influencers of the 1980s were wrong. Parrots are not wonderful pets. If we hope to keep the species tolerably happy in our houses, we must make a choice. We could become their husbands, or their parents, or we could raise them in a blended family with their biological parents.

Read part two and part three in coming issues.

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1. Nancy J. Jacobs, “Reflection: Conviviality and Companionship: Parrots and People in the African Forests,” Environmental History (2021[↩]
2. Harriet Sergeant, “The History of Mr. Polly,” Harper’s & Queen, April, 1985, 163, https://archive.org/details/sim_harpers-and-queen_1985-04_4/page/162/mode/1up?view=theater[↩]
3. Amanda Atha, “Parrot Passion,” Harper’s & Queen, April, 1985, https://archive.org/details/sim_harpers-and-queen_1985-04_4/page/162/mode/1up?view=theater[↩]
4. James Hirsch, “Parrots, Urban Pets of the Moment,” The New York Times, 26 February 1989, https://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/26/archives/life-style-parrots-urban-pets-of-the-moment.html?searchResultPosition=1[↩]
5. Jane Stern and Michael Stern, “Parrots,” The New Yorker, 30 July, 1990, 62, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1990/07/30/parrots[↩]
6. Gottlieb Dändliker, “The Grey Parrot in Ghana: A Population Survey, a Contribution to the Biology of the Species, a Study of its Commercial Exploitation and Management Recommendations, 1992.” Unpublished report on CITES project S-30. David Tsz Chung Chan et al., “Global Trade in Parrots – Influential Factors of Trade and Implications for Conservation,” Global Ecology and Conservation 30 (1 October 2021): e01784.[↩]
7. Teresa Mulliken, South Africa’s Trade in African Grey Parrots (Endangered Wildlife Trust, 1995).[↩]
8. Dändliker, “The Grey Parrot in Ghana.” Chan et al., “Global Trade in Parrots.”[↩]
9. Colin M. Poole and Chris R. Shepherd, “Shades of Grey: The Legal Trade in CITES-Listed Birds in Singapore, Notably the Globally Threatened African Grey Parrot Psittacus erithacus,” Oryx: Flora and Fauna International 51 (2016): 411-417: ; Chan et al., “Global Trade in Parrots.”[↩]
10. Rowan O. Martin, “The Wild Bird Trade and African Parrots: Past, Present and Future Challenges,” Ostrich 89 (2018): 139-143; Rowan O. Martin, “Grey Areas: Temporal and Geographical Dynamics of International Trade of Grey and Timneh Parrots (Psittacus erithacus and P. timneh) under CITES,” Emu – Austral Ornithology 118, (2018): 113-125.[↩]
11. Rowan O. Martin, Cristiana Senni, and Neil C. D’Cruze, “Trade in Wild-Sourced African Grey Parrots: Insights Via Social Media,” Global Ecology and Conservation 15 (2018): e00429; Alisa Davies et al., “Live Wild Bird Exports from West Africa: Insights into Recent Trade from Monitoring Social Media,” Bird Conservation International 32 (2022): 559-572; Simone Haysom and Rowan Martin, Online Markets for African Grey Parrots in Africa: Evidence for a Growing Trade for Endangered Birds as Pets, Global Initiative Against Globalized Crime (Geneva, 2021), https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/GITOC-MMFU-Trend-Report_Parrots.pdf; Rowan Martin, Amy Hinsley, and Ana Nuno, “Big Tech, Regulators and Conservationists Must Unite to Tackle Online Wildlife Trade,” The Conversation, 11 January, 2022, https://theconversation.com/big-tech-regulators-and-conservationists-must-unite-to-tackle-online-wildlife-trade-173431; Hans Lucht, “EU-Driven Border Control in Niger: From Migrants to Gold, Drugs, and Rare Animals,” Cultural Anthropology 37 (2022): 16-22; John Hart, “An Evaluation of Efforts to Address Unsustainable Trade in African Grey Parrots (Psittacus erithacus) in Eastern DRC,” (Kigali, 23 July 2023); Caroline Chebet, “Lifting the Veil on Illegal Trade in African Grey Parrot in Kenya,” The Standard (Nairobi), 28 October 2024, https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/health/author/35/caroline-chebet; Benjamin Jumbe, “Ugandan Court Hands Congolese Parrot Trafficker Seven-Year Jail Sentence,” Mongabay, 13 May 2022, https://news.mongabay.com/2022/05/ugandan-court-hands-congolese-parrot-trafficker-seven-year-jail-sentence/.[↩]
12. I thank Valerie Robins and Nathan Atkinson for interpreting the CITES data. This total for captive bred combines categories C (captive-bred in accordance with CITES Resolution conf 10.16 [Rev]; 753,354), D (captive-bred in accordance with Resolution Conf. 12.10 [Rev. CoP15]; 102,327), and F (captive bred not in accordance with 10.16 [Rev]; 32,775). This total for wild combines categories W (wild-caught; 641,878), U (unknown; 13,173), and N/A (blank 563,810).[↩]
13. BirdLife International, Species Factsheet: Psittacus timneh (2023), http://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/timneh-parrot-psittacus-timneh/details; BirdLife International, Species Factsheet: Psittacus erithacus (2023), http://datazone.birdlife.org/species/factsheet/grey-parrot-psittacus-erithacus/details. The wide range of the 2006 estimate undercuts confidence in its validity. In fact, its methods were never subject to peer review. Rowan Martin, personal communication, 6 March 2025.[↩]
14. Nathaniel D. Annorbah, Nigel J. Collar, and Stuart J. Marsden, “Trade and Habitat Change Virtually Eliminate the Grey Parrot Psittacus erithacus from Ghana,” Ibis 158 (2016): 82-91.[↩]
15. Rowan Martin and James Gilardi, “World Parrot Trust Comments on CBP Application,” unpublished work, 19 December 2019.[↩]
16. Catherine Oliver, 197-202, “The Opposite of Extinction,” Environment and History, 2, 2022, https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/whp/eh/2022/00000028/00000002/art00003.[↩]