Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Hunting Pushes Bird to Extinction

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CARACAS, Nov 24 2008 (IPS) - The scarlet finch, also known as the red siskin (Carduelis cucullata), a small bird native to northern Venezuela, is on the verge of disappearing and is rarely seen in the wild because poachers capture these birds to cross them with canaries in order to produce red offspring. The hybrid “is red like the finch and sings like a canary, which is why hunters capture the few that are left in order to sell them to people who raise canaries. It is an illegal but very profitable practice,” researcher Jon Paul Rodríguez, co-author of the Red Book of Venezuelan Fauna, told Tierramérica.

Of the 3,625 species evaluated in that book, 202 are threatened with extinction due to loss of habitat, hunting, pollution, changes in population dynamic, invasive species, human activities or natural disasters.