Searching for Bonobo in Congo

“Finally”

ILLEGAL:  since July 31^st 2025,
ILLEGAL:  everywhere in DRCongo,
          To Capture
          To Stock
          To Transport
          Or to, in anyway, commercialize African Grey Parrots.
The law was signed by the National Minister of the Environment, Eve Bazaiba Masudi, just before handing management of her office to a new Minister, Professor Marie Niange.

The Minister of the Environment, Madame Eve Bazaiba, signed the arrêté outlawing all parrot trade in DR Congo.

Minister Bazaiba’s signature was a courageous act.  She knew the strength of the parrot traders’ lobby.  Our own P3CK team saw LINEFCO (National league of animal and plant exporters) at “work” walking in and out of the Minister’s offices during the 2 weeks before she signed. 

History: since January 2017 the African Grey Parrot trade is banned by CITES on the international Market (CITES decision), but not in DR Congo, the main source of wild caught Greys. Congo had no internal national protections.  A free-for-all.

The Minister understood the wealth of the lobby and the lucrative role of the Grey Parrot trade.  She understood how the lobby’s wealth, through a combination of benefit and fear, infiltrates the Agencies under her direction.  Before she could sign, the law needed approval by these same administrations, the Division of Nature Conservation (DNC) and Congo’s Institute of Nature Conservation (ICCN) which includes the national CITES management.

Minister Bazaiba understood the global significance of forbidding the lucrative Grey Parrot trade.

Mme Bazaiba had a draft law written up.  The person she put in charge, Gilbert Njadi, had worked many years in ICCN before coming to DNC. Gilbert, too, understood the game.  The minister passed the draft around and called a workshop at the end of July for the ICCN, DNC, P3CK-Lukuru (us) and civil society to discuss its articles.

Gilbert told us that he knew the draft would be ripped apart by his colleagues in ICCN and DNC; for that reason, he said, he wrote in clauses that he thought could be torn out while maintaining the strength of the law.  One of the clauses struck down was protection for the Red Fronted Parrot, which has only partial CITES protection and is often used as a cover for international shipments of African Greys.  In 2024 over three hundred African Greys were confiscated in Turkey; they had been shipped as red fronted greens from DR Congo.

Two people from LINEFCO, Byart and Kalala, standing center above, showed up uninvited to the workshop, but to no avail.

WHAT DO WE KNOW about the source of opposition to the new law?

(1) From the very beginning of our work with parrots, we were aware of big “trade houses” in Kindu, where we started.  Theo worked with the outfit led by Martin Byart and Aimé worked for the outfit led by Alex Kalala or Balk-birds.  Both Theo and Aimé had over a hundred African Grey parrots at their own bases in Kindu and they each had satellite stocking hubs with hundreds more outside of the city.  Twice, Theo paid under the table to facilitate the export of nearly a thousand Grey Parrots after a law was signed to forbid their export from the province of Maniema.  A year later, Aimé offered money to destabilize a confiscation raid on a cargo of parrots he was accompanying by train to Lubumbashi.

Theo with parrot in Kindu.

(2) The names of the patrons of Theo and Aimé showed up again and again on parrot shipping crates in Kisangani’s Bangoka airport, a major convergence point for parrots moving to Kinshasa. Not only Byart and Balk (Kalala), but also Debaba, Mboyo, Kida, and others were regularly repeated over ten years of monitoring the parrot air-shipments.

Shipping crate full of African Greys on the tarmac of Kisangani’s Bangoka airport.

(3) In Tshopo Province, after the governor signed a provincial decree outlawing parrot trade, we tried to clean out parrot-stocking houses in the capital, Kisangani.   Although we could pull off confiscations of 20 to 40 parrots being brought in by traders outside the city, the big houses within the city itself, were not so easy.   When the police finally zeroed in on one – it was empty.  Feathers, dead birds and a few empty cages, were all that remained.  Apparently, the informant-traitor was a supposed “collaborator” from the local Environment Coordination.

Although, the traders put little effort in keeping secret their manner of operating in DRCongo, there are many CRUCIAL ELEMENTS WE DON’T UNDERSTAND:

• Why is there such a huge and uncontrolled overseas market for African Grey Parrots, given that over 180 countries are members of the CITES convention that bans their international trade?
• How high does the protection of parrot traders reach in Congo’s administration?  
• How many red-fronted parrots remain in DRCongo?  We fear they are much rarer than even the African Greys, that the Red-fronted Parrots are used to camouflage.  Their loss is a sealed-off secret…known perhaps by none.

FINALLY, we welcome the new incoming minister of the Environment, Mme Prof Marie Niange.  We have much work to do together.