Photo: The Guardian
Harry Potter obsession threat to owls in Asia
Robin McKie, in the UK's Guardian Online newspaper has reported that wildlife experts are sounding the alarm over a sad downside to J. K. Rowling's tales of the troubled young wizard. The illegal trade in owls has jumped in the far east over the past decade and researchers fear it could endanger the survival of these distictive predators in Asia.
Conservationists say the Snowy Owl Hedwig is fuelling global demand for wild-caught birds for use as pets. In 2001, the tear in which the first film was released, only a few hundred were sold at Indonesia's many bird markets. By 2016, the figure had soared to more than 13,000, according to researchers Vincent Nijman and Anna Nekaris of Oxford Brookes University in a paper in 'Global Ecology and Conservation'.
The issue is of critical concern because the owls being offered for sale are nearly all taken from the wild. The overall popularity of owls as pets in Indonesia has risen to such an extent that it may imperil the conservation of some of the less abundant species. As a result, Nijman and Nekaris urge that owls should be added to Indonesia's list of protected birds.
For her part, Rowling has condemned the keeping of owls as pets.
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BarrytheBirder
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