HONG KONG (AP) — Critically endangered yellow-crested cockatoos found an unexpected sanctuary among Hong Kong ’s towering skyscrapers, but like their human neighbors they now face trouble finding a place to call home.
Native to Indonesia and East Timor, the snow-white birds, their crests flashing like yellow crowns, squawk through the urban parks of the Asian financial hub. They make up roughly 10% of the species’ global wild population, which numbers only up to 2,000 mature birds.
Research shows the city’s cockatoo population has stagnated as the birds, which live in tree cavities, are losing natural nesting spaces in old trees due to typhoons and government tree trimming for public safety. That’s adding to global pressures on cockatoos such as the illegal pet trade and climate change.Hong Kong’s conservationists have stepped in with a solution: installing artificial nest boxes that mimic these natural hollows.Astrid Andersson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hong Kong who led the project, said a pair of birds already settled in a nest box her team fixed onto a tree on her campus, the city’s oldest university. She aims to install 10 boxes by year’s end and ultimately boost that figure to 50 in the next few years across Hong Kong Island.
“And then they can continue to live in the city,” she said.
Pet trade and habitat loss push species in Indonesia to the brink
In this photo released by Bonnie J. Zimmermann, a monument depicting the Yellow Crested Cockatoo (Cacatua sulphurea abbotti) is seen in Masakambing, Sumenep, East Java, Indonesia, on June 29, 2023. (Bonnie J. Zimmermann via AP)
Once widespread across island chains from central to eastern Indonesia and East Timor, the yellow-crested cockatoo has vanished from many islands and clings to survival on others.
Weak enforcement of a 1994 export ban by Indonesia has allowed the trade to persist, including targeting chicks. In 2015, Indonesian police arrested a man on suspicion of smuggling about 20 birds by stuffing them inside water bottles.
“The fires are humongous,” said Bonnie Zimmermann, director of the Indonesian Parrot Project, a nonprofit organization.
Hong Kong bird market sales raise concerns
The wild cockatoos in Hong Kong’s urban parks could be from escaped or released pets, Andersson said. One urban legend says they descended from pet birds released by a British governor before he surrendered to invading Japanese troops in 1941. Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to Chinese control in 1997.
Hong Kong bans commercial trading in wild-caught cockatoos, but allows captive-bred sales for operations registered under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES. However, there is no such breeding operation registered in the city.In August, a three-month-old chick was priced at 14,000 Hong Kong dollars ($1,800)
A 2017-2018 survey by Andersson found 33 cockatoos for sale, triple the number of birds imported since 2005. They could be from home breeding, trafficking from abroad or Hong Kong’s wild population, the university said in a statement.
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