Woman Saves Hundreds Of Birds From Illegal Poaching

The Dodo

Poachers use the most disturbing methods to catch these birds for eating. This woman told us how she's saving hundreds of birds — watch her rescue a giant owl from a poacher's net!

Transcript

00:00It's completely illegal. Poachers want to trap these birds, to consume the birds, and

00:10also to sell onto the black market. It's an awful thing to witness, knowing that these

00:15birds will die if you weren't there. It can take quite a bit of time to untangle them,

00:26holding their feet first, so then they don't get tangled even more. And then we take the

00:31net around their body and slowly take them out that way. We just give them a bit of water

00:36and then release them straight away. My first time seeing a bird trap was actually on a

00:42lime stick. They'll coat these sticks and then they'll scatter them to the skies as

00:47a branch. Just seeing it hanging there helplessly was just really shocking, knowing that this

00:52is happening to them. Some of the situations have been really hard for me, to see this

01:00bird and knowing that it's been in there for so long. But when I'm untangling it, it makes

01:06me quite happy knowing that I'm going to be able to let this bird continue its migration

01:10and feel that we're helping them. I volunteer with the Committee Against Bird Slaughter.

01:20The labs operate in several countries in the Mediterranean. That's where the poaching

01:24mainly happens. I've been volunteering for three years now and I think I'll be volunteering

01:29for a lifetime. Poaching doesn't exist anymore. That's the main goal for this charity, is

01:36to stop it completely. Poachers will also use imitating devices, so this attracts more

01:49birds into the net. Because it's a non-selective way of trapping, they also end up catching

01:56non-target species. The owls get in the nets quite a lot and they're a lot more fragile

02:04because their wings are a lot more delicate. We have a local vet that will help us and

02:10they will rehabilitate the bird and we'll release it. Every bird is different. They

02:19all have their different ways of nesting, they all have their different ways of communicating

02:23with each other. I love their quirkiness. It keeps me wanting to discover more about

02:28them. People see a bird and they say, oh, it's just a bird. Wildlife essentially is

02:36what's making this planet stay alive and we need to protect them.

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