Tracy Aviary - "anti" to pet bird keeping? - August 19, 2011 letter to Tim Brown

August 19, 2011
   
Tim Brown
Friends of Tracy Aviary
c/o: Tracy Aviary
589 East 1300 South
Salt Lake City, Utah 84105

Hello Mr. Brown,

This is a follow up to my August 7th and 13th letters to the chair of your board of directors.

I have found that Tracy Aviary sits on property owned by the City, and that the property & bird collection there is owned by the City. Also here’s a mission statement for the Aviary I found on the City’s website:

Tracy Aviary operates in partnership with Salt Lake City Corporation wherein the non-profit entity manages the day-to-day operations for Salt Lake City Corporation and the City retains ownership of the assets.  The mission of the Aviary is to foster caring for the natural world, enriching and transforming lives through connections with birds.  In addition, Salt Lake City provides an operating subsidy.

Having your staff walk around the grounds pompously telling long time members like me, that the mission of the Aviary requires that a Plush Crested Jay that “likes people too much” must be hidden away in a back room --- as a citizen here, tax payer, and long time member of the Aviary, I say to you that such actions run counter to the stated mission of the Aviary as from the City’s website.

...foster caring for the natural world, enriching and transforming lives through connections with birds

Nothing more than this. Not a warped ideology of supposed conservation that believes that all first hand interaction between humans and birds should be done on a permit-only basis. Humans are part of the natural world - with a shared common ancestor between us & chimps & bonobos, and a 1 to 5% genetic difference between us and the latter two species. We are animals just as much as are all the other animals on this pale blue dot.

Also I do not see how it is within the scope of the City-mandated mission of the Aviary to have your employees go to participate in online forums, on behalf of the Aviary, in juvenile, childish, and retributive ways (as indicated in my previous letters). I have observed first hand the comments your current head aviculturist as made in online forums, for and on behalf of the Aviary. They have been unprofessional & childish.

The Aviary has come a long way in 16 years. Lots of new exhibits have been built. A back room area that isn’t like the dark ages. But what I and others who visit care most about are the individual birds themselves, not about whether your staff feel that no one should have a pet bird at home, or about whether your staff feel a video of the hornbills has an accurate verbal description of them, or about whether your head keeper has a fawning appreciation for the work of Doug Folland. Who cares. The Aviary should be about the birds, not about having your staff get in the way via one method or another. And certainly not via the alienation process initiated by the actions of your head keeper in this case - perhaps spurred on by your own personal bias against pet bird keeping?

And just to be clear - regarding Plush Crested Jays:
       
    Plush Crested Jays are not endangered.
   
    They are not on a species survival plan (SSP).
   
    They are legal to keep & breed with out a permit.

    There is no difference legally nor with regard to conservation impact, between the keeping of a Quaker parrot, an African Grey parrot, or a Plush Crested Jay.

    Plush Crested Jays are not listed on the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

So, I strongly object as noted to the double standard here taken here. You may as well also hide away in a back room all of the Sun Conures next, and several of the ducks & geese.

I have visited zoos around the world, and outside of Utah I’ve lived in Oregon & Texas. Zoos visited include: Oregon Zoo, London Zoo, San Antonio Zoo, zoos in China & Ukraine, the National Zoo in D.C., and so on. The things that made all these zoos special were the individual birds there and how they expressed and showed their own intelligence, grace, and unique personalities. The staff at these other zoos weren’t walking around the grounds pontificating about how birds and humans must be kept separate. And their staff weren’t going online so as to have negative and childish interactions with members of the public in the name of these zoos.

I know that statements from your staff on these issues don’t come out of a vacuum. They may be resulting from directives from yourself & the other leadership team of the Friends of Tracy Aviary. So if there is an anti-pet-bird mentality there that is so fearful of an exotic jay actually liking people, this needs to change.

It goes without saying that having an exotic corvid at home requires a huge commitment. The cost of entry for an African Pied Crow is now approaching $2,000. And a pair of Plush Crested Jays may go for $1,400. In my view it’s a good thing that these birds cost as much as they do. And if in the future a way could be found to legalize native corvids, perhaps in a similar manner to how native raptors are legal within falconry, that would be good.

And, my own reactions to your leadership on this issue were highly justified, because of what I saw as a breach of trust by your staff & indirectly by your management team. Passive aggression on the part of your staff, via hiding away a pair or one bird that “liked people too much,” and because “it’s not the mission of the aviary to have imprinted birds on display.”

Yes it is, in part, and with care.

Use of words like “imprinted” in this case by your staff are rather inappropriate, bigoted, and counterproductive though. The term negates the fact that a.) humans are animals too, and b.) it’s the mission of the Aviary to enrich and transform lives through connections with birds, and c.) it implies that there’s something inherently evil about a bird actually liking a human, and d.) indicative of an anti-pet-bird ideology that really is counter productive and directly goes against the mission of the Aviary. You don’t have to highly promote pet bird keeping. You can teach about how to do it responsibly. But don’t treat an “imprinted” exotic non-endangered jay the same way you would a highly endangered SSP participant bird that really should not be kept as a pet - Plush Crested Jays are not SSP birds.

Tracy Aviary has been and should continue to be a place for people who love birds. Nothing more. The extra stuff, such as an advocacy for conservation will come naturally. But micro-managing individual birds, especially exotic non-threatened ones that are legal without a permit in private aviculture, in a vindictive and petty way - that really is counter productive. And such actions will prompt people like me who have had ties to the wider avicultural world for a lot longer than most of your staff have been adults, well it will prompt me to make note of how things have gone down hill there to fellow aviculturists around the world.

Sincerely,

Jonathan