Illegal Bird Trapping

Illegal bird trapping is the capture of wild birds using any of a wide range of techniques originally developed for hunting birds for food, in violation of the laws that most countries now maintain to protect wild bird populations. Not every trapping technique kills or harms the bird: some methods capture birds alive and unharmed, historically useful to ornithology researchers, while others target wild birds for display in captivity at zoological gardens or for keeping as pets. Bird trapping was formerly unregulated everywhere, and it is the enactment of specific protective laws and regulations in most countries, and trapping carried out in defiance of them, that makes the modern offense.