Survei Burung Indonesia dan The Nielsen juga menunjukkan, lebih dari setengah burung kicauan yang dipelihara (58,5 persen), ditangkap di alam. Dari tahun ke tahun jumlahnya juga terus bertambah. Kalau tahun 1999 masih 738.518 ekor, tahun 2006 jadi 878.077 ekor.
Artinya, ada ancaman buat pemelihara burung, yakni lama-lama burung di hutan akan habis sehingga hobi ini bisa tamat riwayatnya. Apalagi hutan-hutan juga sudah banyak yang rusak sehingga burung makin susah bertahan hidup. Sudah hutan rusak, banyak ditangkapi pula! Menurut para penghobi burung, dari waktu ke waktu berbagai jenis burung di alam, termasuk burung kicauan, semakin langka. Beberapa jenis burung kicauan seperti cucak hijau jambul kuning (kasus di
Indukan Anis kembang Zoothera interpres sedang mengerami telurnya di penangkaran Pak Gimin, Salatiga (Foto: BI/Fahrul P. Amama)
Untuk bikin hobi memelihara burung tetap awet, salah satu solusinya, ya, penangkaran. Dengan penangkaran, berarti burung di alam tidak perlu dipaksa datang ke kota dengan
ditangkapi, tapi dikembangbiakkan di tempat tertentu. Upaya untuk menangkarkan jenis-jenis burung kicauan seperti jalak suren, murai batu, dan anis kembang telah banyak dilakukan oleh kalangan penangkar dan penghobi burung kicauan. Cucak hijau dan anis merah yang sebelumnya sangat sulit ditangkarkan pun telah mulai berhasil ditangkarkan. Dengan demikian, pasokan burung kicauan untuk peliharaan lebih terjamin dan stok burung di alam juga lumayan aman.
Selain itu, salah satu keuntungan dari penangkaran adalah jenis burung yang berasal dari penangkaran sudah lebih akrab dengan manusia. Jadi, burung lebih mudah dilatih dan lengket dengan pemiliknya. Kalau diikutkan lomba, burung hasil penangkaran juga tidak gampang stress menghadapi lingkungan yang baru. Akhirnya, penangkaran dapat menjadi salah satu solusi penting dalam konservasi burung-burung liar di alam sekaligus bikin hobi memelihara burung tahan lama. Siap menangkar?
Penulis adalah pemerhati burung kicauan, bekerja di lembaga ”Burung Indonesia”.
By Dr Paul Jepson and Dr Richard J. Ladle. Oxford University Centre for the Environment.
Darwin project A Market-Led Conservation Response to the Domestic Bird-Trade in Indonesia.
One way to improve the performance of conservation is to identify different policy approaches and to evaluate the likely effectiveness of plausible options in the target socio-political setting. Such evaluation is important because environmental governance is currently transforming to embrace a more complex interplay of actors, mechanisms and instruments. Consequently, as conservationists we should be both questioning the efficacy of normative state-led, 'command and control' regulatory approaches, and evaluating the potential of so-called hybrid governance approaches which are characterised by a greater involvement of non-state actors and the use of market-based, voluntary, eco-labelling and other 'new' policy instruments. This is the goal of our Darwin project titled "A market led conservation response to the domestic bird trade in Indonesia" which is focusing on the massive demand for wild-caught birds generated by the hugely popular Indonesian pastime of songbird-keeping. Here we present a summary of some preliminary findings which we are preparing for submission to various conservation journals.
We adopted a mixed methodology approach involving a major questionnaire survey in the six largest cities of Java and Bali, an in-depth interview survey, and a social network analysis of the bird keeper fraternity. The questionnaire survey of over 2000 households, conducted with the help of our partners AC Nielsen and Burung (formerly) BirdLife Indonesia, found that 1-in-3 households surveyed keep a bird and nearly 2-in-3 urban households have kept a bird some time in the last 10 years. Our projections suggest that just over 1 million wild-caught song birds are currently kept in the six cities, and this figure includes (median) projections over 150,000 Orange-headed Ground Thrushes and 100,000 White-rumped Shama. The former species was rare in our 1999 survey (Jepson & Ladle 2005) and in-depth interviews confirmed a rise in popularity of keeping native songbirds such as thrushes with exceptional vocal repertoires (mostly forest species), and that this trade may be driving rolling local extinctions of these species in forest blocks across Indonesia.
 | Fig. 1. Birds are the most popular pet in Indonesian cities. They are kept as a reminder of the village, a talking point, and to create a pleasant atmosphere in the home. Keen hobbyists train their birds to compete in song-contests (photo Nick Hall). |
Our projections from this survey suggest that songbird-keepers contribute approximately £41.2 to the economy of these six cities. Of this, £14.2 million is produced by sale and trading of birds, £10 million from manufacture and selling of bird cages and ca. £7 million from collection, breeding and sale of live food (ants eggs, worms, crickets). These economic activities create entrepreneurial and livelihood opportunities for some of the poorer sections of urban society.
 | Fig. 2. Cottage industries making cages and other bird-keeping paraphernalia provide employment opportunities for young craftsmen(photo Nick Hall). |
At the heart of the bird-keeping hobby is the songbird contest. These events are something of a bizarre hybrid between a horse race, dog show and cockfight. They are held every weekend in the cities and local song contests feed into regional contests which in turn feed into three annual national song contest. The most recent of these, which had ex-president Gus Dur as its patron, attracted over 4000 participants and spectators and 800 competing birds. The vast majority of the competing birds were wild caught and from five local (Javan) species. The 10 separate orange-headed thrush 'classes' each attracted 30 to 40 bird entrants with the top 'mega star' class carrying an entry fee of £12 and winning prize of £1000. More significantly, champion birds exchange hands for up to $18,000 creating an enormous enthusiasm for scouting, training, buying and selling birds within the hobby.
 | Fig. 3. Songbird contests are noisy and riotous affairs as bird clubs shout their advice to judges that it is their birds that deserve a scoring flag (photo Nick Hall). |
Our research suggests that simple regulatory 'law and fine' approaches are unlikely to have any meaningful conservation impact on a hobby that is so deeply embedded in urban culture, society and politics. Instead, we are exploring other options with leaders of the hobbyist fraternity, bird-breeders and a major bird-food company. We are looking at a strategy that involves expanding captive breeding and supporting this with a certification and verifications scheme and initiatives to change the perceived prestige rankings of non-ring versus ringed-bird classes at song-contests. An exciting dimension of this approach is our realisation that bird-keeping community includes some of the most successful and innovative entrepreneurs in Indonesia and that several of leading hobbyists are seriously conservation minded. Engaging this new constituency could bring a new 'edge' and dynamism to the conservation effort in Indonesia.
 | Fig. 4. Social entrepreneurship is particularly notable amongst bird-breeders with many adopting business models that generate employment for housewives and retired or under-employed people in their community, or as in this example, young men from a local orphanage (photo Paul Jepson). |
Jepson, P. & Ladle, R. J. (2006) Bird keeping in Indonesia: conservation impacts and the potential for substitution-based conservation responses. Oryx,39, 442-448
Link to this article: http://darwin.defra.gov.uk/focus/indonesian_songbirds/
| Paul Jepson a1c1 and Richard J. Ladle a1 a1 Biodiversity Research Group & Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, Dyson Perrins Building, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK |
|
Bird-keeping is an extremely popular pastime in Indonesia, where there is a thriving internal market in both wild-caught and captive-bred birds. However, little is known about whether the scale of bird-keeping represents a genuine conservation threat to native populations. Here we present the results of the largest ever survey of bird-keeping among households in Indonesia's five major cities. Birds were found to be urban Indonesia's most popular pet (kept by 21.8% of survey households) and we conservatively estimate that as many as 2.6 million birds are kept in the five cities sampled. Of bird-keeping households, 78.5% kept domestic species and/or commercially bred species and 60.2% kept wild-caught birds that we classified into three conservation categories: native songbirds, native parrots and imported songbirds. Compared to non-bird owners, households keeping wild-caught birds in all three conservation categories were richer and better educated, whereas households owning commercially-bred species were richer but not better educated and households keeping domestic species did not differ in educational or socio-economic status. We conclude that bird-keeping in Indonesia is at a scale that warrants a conservation intervention and that promoting commercially-bred alternatives may be an effective and popular solution.
(Received August 2 2004)