The Australian
government has permitted the export of hundreds of rare and endangered parrots
to a German organisation headed by a convicted kidnapper, fraudster and
extortionist, despite concerns the birds could be sold at a huge profit.
An investigation by Guardian Australia
has revealed that the Berlin-based Association for the Conservation of Threatened Parrots
received permission to export 232 birds between 2015 and November 2018 – more
than 80% of all the live native birds legally exported from Australia in the
same period.
The exports include
threatened species such as Carnaby’s and Baudin’s black cockatoos, worth tens
of thousands of dollars each.
The head of
the ACTP, Martin Guth, has multiple criminal convictions, including a five-year
jail sentence for hostage-taking, extortion and attempted fraud in 1996. In
2009 Guth was sentenced to one year and eight months in prison for seven cases
of fraud. In one incident Guth kidnapped two men and threatened to cut their
fingers off unless they paid a large sum of money.
A six-month Guardian
investigation has found:
· Export permits for
Australian birds specified they were for exhibition purposes only, but ACTP has
no facility that is freely open to the public.
· Export permits prohibited
the sale of the birds or their offspring, but private messages on social media
reveal native Australian birds apparently from ACTP have been offered for sale
for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The German federal agency for nature
conservation has said it was aware of those offers.
The Australian government was repeatedly warned of concerns about ACTP by international wildlife
authorities, private breeders and the government MP Warren Entsch.International conservation bodies and scientists have raised questions about the organisation’s activities in other countries, including Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Brazil.
ACTP does not publish its financial records and is not registered with any major international zoological association.
Concerns about ACTP in Australia were raised with the former environment minister and now treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, and the office of the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, as well as the environment department. But the government has continued to allow the exports. The latest shipment of 64 birds to ACTP was approved on 12 November.
In December 2017 the government brokered a deal with ACTP that involved the organisation giving $200,000 to the Western Australian government for projects to protect the endangered western ground parrot.
In response to questions
from Guardian Australia, the office of the threatened species commissioner,
Sally Box, said no such deal would have been reached had it known of Guth’s
record…..
Guth’s criminal
convictions do not relate to his involvement with ACTP. But the investigation
raises serious questions about the oversight of exports of native species from
Australia, and the due diligence conducted by international wildlife
authorities on a group that has acquired one of the largest collections of rare
and endangered parrots in the world.
The Australian
parrots, which were bought openly and legally by ACTP from local breeders and
birdkeepers, were exported after the environment department agreed to recognise
the organisation as a zoo in 2015.
Documents show ACTP obtained a licence to operate as a zoo in Germany in 2014, only months before its application to Australian authorities.
The organisation told the Australian government it ran numerous centres in Germany. None are freely open to the public. Its main premises at Tasdorf, a village 30km outside Berlin, displays no public information other than a mobile phone number. Its location is not advertised and the buildings display no opening hours nor any other indication that the public is welcome to visit….
Germany’s Federal Agency
for Nature Conservation (BfN) has confirmed to Guardian Australia it
was aware that glossy black cockatoos imported from Australia by ACTP had been
offered for sale. It said it had looked into the offers and found the birds had
been legally imported and bred, and there were no limits on trade.
But under the terms of
ACTP’s Australian permits, the animals and their offspring could only be moved
to recognised zoos…. [my yellow highlighting]
