Avian Action: Free the Java Rice Bird
By Devereaux Lebhar
Devereaux Lebhar
Dr. Sarah Thaller
Morning class
11/5/19
Avian Action: Free the Java Rice Bird
The Java Rice Bird (Padda Oryzivora), also known as the Java Finch, Java Temple Bird, Rice Bird, Paddy Bird, and Java Sparrow, is a small passerine bird, which means that it has three toes in the front of the foot, and one in the back (Clench et al., “The Java Sparrow”). It is native to the island of Java, Indonesia, and has been introduced to Japan, China, India, Hawaii, and Christmas Island as a captive bred bird for the pet trade and in some cases as a resident in the wild (“Java Sparrow”). The Java Rice Bird can eat a variety of seeds, grains, greens, and other foods, including canary seeds, white proso millet, oats, bean sprouts, cucumber, boiled egg, orange slices, corn, soy milk, and rice (“The Java Sparrow”). The Java Rice Bird is abundant in the international pet bird trade, and is loved as a companion and aviary bird because of its resilience, hardiness, tamability, and friendliness towards humans and other species of birds. This paper will argue that the importation and possession of Java Rice Birds should be allowed in the US because they have proven not to be threats to United States agriculture or environments, and will explain that in the time that the Java Rice Bird was in the US, the US mainland and US territories did not experience any of the preconceived problems mentioned by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).
Due to the fact that the Java Rice Bird is abundant in the pet trade around the world, one may wonder why it is so difficult to find any in the United States. This would be because it is illegal to import the Java Rice Bird into the US, and, in some states, it is illegal to possess the Java Rice Bird as a pet due to laws enforced as a result of the Lacey Act (Carter 2). The Lacey Act was passed by Congress in the early 1900s, and while the US Department of the Interior was given the responsibility of enforcement, it was not until the 1970s that the Injurious Wildlife Regulations (50 CFR 16) implemented the injurious wildlife mandate of the Lacey Act (Carter 1). Henceforth, any species labeled as “injurious” by the USFWS was forbidden to be imported into the US (Carter 1). Java Rice Birds that were in the United States prior to the enforcement of the injurious wildlife mandate however, were not regulated (Carter 1). Because of this, it is speculated that most of the captive breeding populations of Java Rice Birds that remained in the US died off due to inbreeding as a result of no new bloodlines being imported.
The original intentions of the Lacey Act were to regulate exotic wildlife for the protection of native flora and fauna and to safeguard agricultural production (Carter 1). The Injurious Wildlife Regulations attempted to meet this expectation by restricting the importation of any species deemed “injurious” by the USFWS. The problem with this, however, was the fact that the Injurious Wildlife Regulations did not care to find out why the USFWS had these various species listed as “injurious” or what they were injurious towards. Because of this, some of the birds on the list of “injurious” species have not proven to be injurious to US agriculture or environments and were added to that list as a mere precaution without regarding any experiences any state(s) had with the species.
This is exactly the case with the Java Rice Bird. Before the enforcement of the injurious species regulations, Java Rice Birds were being imported by the thousands annually. According to Frank Miser of Magnolia Bird Farm, Miser alone imported around 4,000-5,000 Java Rice Birds each year between 1963 and 1968 (Carter 3). This adds up to a total of 20,000-25,000 Java Rice Birds imported over that five-year period, and Miser was only one of four or five people importing Java Rice birds into the United States at that time (Carter 3). According to Richard Baer, the former president of the American Federation of Aviculture (AFA), there was a time in which Java Rice Birds were so common in the United States that one could acquire a pair of Java Rice Birds in a dime store for $3.98, and this included a free cage (Carter 4).
It must be acknowledged that out of the thousands of Java Rice Birds imported and sold in the US prior to the injurious wildlife regulations, a significant number of these birds must have escaped due to various reasons. According to Phil Carter, author of Java Rice Bird Pest or Pet?, “a significant number must have escaped or been released into the wild. Shipping and handling during that period was lax and because birds were cheap and plentiful, little thought was given to escapees” (4). Even with the large number of Java Rice Birds that must have escaped from captivity, feral populations of the Java Rice Bird that the USFWS fears will cause damage to agriculture and the environment have failed to materialize (Carter 3). It is important to remember that the Java Rice Bird was in the US throughout the 70 years it took the Injurious Wildlife Regulations to enforce the injurious wildlife mandate. According to a chart created by Cliff Witt of the AFA, the only exceptions for this are the states and/or territories which have the most tropical climates, including Florida, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, all of which have varying feral populations of the Java Rice Bird (Carter 4).
Dr. Sarah Thaller
Morning class
11/5/19
Avian Action: Free the Java Rice Bird
The Java Rice Bird (Padda Oryzivora), also known as the Java Finch, Java Temple Bird, Rice Bird, Paddy Bird, and Java Sparrow, is a small passerine bird, which means that it has three toes in the front of the foot, and one in the back (Clench et al., “The Java Sparrow”). It is native to the island of Java, Indonesia, and has been introduced to Japan, China, India, Hawaii, and Christmas Island as a captive bred bird for the pet trade and in some cases as a resident in the wild (“Java Sparrow”). The Java Rice Bird can eat a variety of seeds, grains, greens, and other foods, including canary seeds, white proso millet, oats, bean sprouts, cucumber, boiled egg, orange slices, corn, soy milk, and rice (“The Java Sparrow”). The Java Rice Bird is abundant in the international pet bird trade, and is loved as a companion and aviary bird because of its resilience, hardiness, tamability, and friendliness towards humans and other species of birds. This paper will argue that the importation and possession of Java Rice Birds should be allowed in the US because they have proven not to be threats to United States agriculture or environments, and will explain that in the time that the Java Rice Bird was in the US, the US mainland and US territories did not experience any of the preconceived problems mentioned by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).
Due to the fact that the Java Rice Bird is abundant in the pet trade around the world, one may wonder why it is so difficult to find any in the United States. This would be because it is illegal to import the Java Rice Bird into the US, and, in some states, it is illegal to possess the Java Rice Bird as a pet due to laws enforced as a result of the Lacey Act (Carter 2). The Lacey Act was passed by Congress in the early 1900s, and while the US Department of the Interior was given the responsibility of enforcement, it was not until the 1970s that the Injurious Wildlife Regulations (50 CFR 16) implemented the injurious wildlife mandate of the Lacey Act (Carter 1). Henceforth, any species labeled as “injurious” by the USFWS was forbidden to be imported into the US (Carter 1). Java Rice Birds that were in the United States prior to the enforcement of the injurious wildlife mandate however, were not regulated (Carter 1). Because of this, it is speculated that most of the captive breeding populations of Java Rice Birds that remained in the US died off due to inbreeding as a result of no new bloodlines being imported.
The original intentions of the Lacey Act were to regulate exotic wildlife for the protection of native flora and fauna and to safeguard agricultural production (Carter 1). The Injurious Wildlife Regulations attempted to meet this expectation by restricting the importation of any species deemed “injurious” by the USFWS. The problem with this, however, was the fact that the Injurious Wildlife Regulations did not care to find out why the USFWS had these various species listed as “injurious” or what they were injurious towards. Because of this, some of the birds on the list of “injurious” species have not proven to be injurious to US agriculture or environments and were added to that list as a mere precaution without regarding any experiences any state(s) had with the species.
This is exactly the case with the Java Rice Bird. Before the enforcement of the injurious species regulations, Java Rice Birds were being imported by the thousands annually. According to Frank Miser of Magnolia Bird Farm, Miser alone imported around 4,000-5,000 Java Rice Birds each year between 1963 and 1968 (Carter 3). This adds up to a total of 20,000-25,000 Java Rice Birds imported over that five-year period, and Miser was only one of four or five people importing Java Rice birds into the United States at that time (Carter 3). According to Richard Baer, the former president of the American Federation of Aviculture (AFA), there was a time in which Java Rice Birds were so common in the United States that one could acquire a pair of Java Rice Birds in a dime store for $3.98, and this included a free cage (Carter 4).
It must be acknowledged that out of the thousands of Java Rice Birds imported and sold in the US prior to the injurious wildlife regulations, a significant number of these birds must have escaped due to various reasons. According to Phil Carter, author of Java Rice Bird Pest or Pet?, “a significant number must have escaped or been released into the wild. Shipping and handling during that period was lax and because birds were cheap and plentiful, little thought was given to escapees” (4). Even with the large number of Java Rice Birds that must have escaped from captivity, feral populations of the Java Rice Bird that the USFWS fears will cause damage to agriculture and the environment have failed to materialize (Carter 3). It is important to remember that the Java Rice Bird was in the US throughout the 70 years it took the Injurious Wildlife Regulations to enforce the injurious wildlife mandate. According to a chart created by Cliff Witt of the AFA, the only exceptions for this are the states and/or territories which have the most tropical climates, including Florida, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico, all of which have varying feral populations of the Java Rice Bird (Carter 4).
Because the Java Rice Bird is native to Indonesia, which has a tropical climate, it is able to loosely adapt to other tropical climates. However, even the feral populations of Java Rice Birds in these locations are not recognized as agricultural or environmental pests. Hawaii and Florida have not reported any problems regarding the Java Rice Bird. In Puerto Rico, where the Java Rice Bird is reported to be “well established in the wild… mainly around metropolitan San Juan”, the secretary of natural resources stated that “P. oryzivora is not detrimental to human beings, vegetation, natural resources or wild fauna of Puerto Rico” (Carter 4). This indicates that if the Java Rice Bird were to be released into the wilderness of the United States once more, it would likely have little to no effect on the local agriculture or native wildlife, if it were to survive long enough to create and sustain a large population.
That being said, most states do not have appropriate climates for the Java Rice Bird to survive in, such as California which, ironically enough, has banned the possession of Java Rice Birds. Since California has a desert climate, the humidity levels and plant life in California are going to differ substantially compared to a tropical climate like Indonesia. This means that if any Java Rice Birds escaped they would not survive. Even if the Java Rice Bird’s bodies adapted to such a climate, there would still be a great scarcity of available food choices for those birds, since the plants native to Indonesia would not survive in the unforgiving climate of California. This is also true with states that have excessively cold climates, like Montana or Vermont, which would likely freeze any escaped Java Rice Birds to death.
All of this information is pointing towards the ban(s) on the Java Rice Bird being illegitimate and unnecessary. Members of the AFA who were conducting research for an article on the Java Rice Bird consulted the USFWS Wildlife Assistance Office (the office then in charge of injurious wildlife regulations) about the regulations on the Java Rice Bird (Carter 2). They discovered that those at the USFWS Wildlife Assistance Office could not remember the date in which the injurious wildlife regulations were enacted or the criteria used to classify the birds on the injurious species list as injurious (Carter 2). This list includes not only the Java Rice Bird, but also the Pink Starling (Pastor Roseus), the Quelea Quelea (including the subspecies of black-fronted and red-billed), and the Red-Whiskered Bulbul (Pycnonotus jocosus) (Carter 2).
With this information, it can be confidently said that no one truly knows the reason for the regulations imposed upon the Java Rice Bird. Because of this, bans on the importation and possession of the Java Rice Bird should cease and they should be re-established in the United States as a captive-bred bird for the pet trade, under the condition that the bird(s) were ethically acquired and not wild-caught. Hopefully one day the Java Rice Bird will return to its former glory of being one of the best and most readily available pet birds in the United States.
Special thanks to Mckenna, Monique, Dr. Sarah, and Lorna.
Works Cited:
Carter, Phil. “Java Rice Bird Pest or Pet?” pp. 14-17.
Clench, Mary. Gill, Frank. Austin, Oliver. “Passeriform” britannica.com Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 8 Jan 2018, https://www.britannica.com/animal/passeriform/Skeleton, 12 Nov 2019.
“Java Sparrow (Lonchura oryzivora)” hbw.com Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive, Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A., de Juana, E., Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive, https://www.hbw.com/species/java-sparrow-lonchura-oryzivora, 12 Nov 2019.
“The Java Sparrow (Rice Bird)” finchinfo.com Finch Information Center, Finch Information Center, 2016, http://www.finchinfo.com/birds/finches/species/java_sparrow.php, 11 Nov 2019.
That being said, most states do not have appropriate climates for the Java Rice Bird to survive in, such as California which, ironically enough, has banned the possession of Java Rice Birds. Since California has a desert climate, the humidity levels and plant life in California are going to differ substantially compared to a tropical climate like Indonesia. This means that if any Java Rice Birds escaped they would not survive. Even if the Java Rice Bird’s bodies adapted to such a climate, there would still be a great scarcity of available food choices for those birds, since the plants native to Indonesia would not survive in the unforgiving climate of California. This is also true with states that have excessively cold climates, like Montana or Vermont, which would likely freeze any escaped Java Rice Birds to death.
All of this information is pointing towards the ban(s) on the Java Rice Bird being illegitimate and unnecessary. Members of the AFA who were conducting research for an article on the Java Rice Bird consulted the USFWS Wildlife Assistance Office (the office then in charge of injurious wildlife regulations) about the regulations on the Java Rice Bird (Carter 2). They discovered that those at the USFWS Wildlife Assistance Office could not remember the date in which the injurious wildlife regulations were enacted or the criteria used to classify the birds on the injurious species list as injurious (Carter 2). This list includes not only the Java Rice Bird, but also the Pink Starling (Pastor Roseus), the Quelea Quelea (including the subspecies of black-fronted and red-billed), and the Red-Whiskered Bulbul (Pycnonotus jocosus) (Carter 2).
With this information, it can be confidently said that no one truly knows the reason for the regulations imposed upon the Java Rice Bird. Because of this, bans on the importation and possession of the Java Rice Bird should cease and they should be re-established in the United States as a captive-bred bird for the pet trade, under the condition that the bird(s) were ethically acquired and not wild-caught. Hopefully one day the Java Rice Bird will return to its former glory of being one of the best and most readily available pet birds in the United States.
Special thanks to Mckenna, Monique, Dr. Sarah, and Lorna.
Works Cited:
Carter, Phil. “Java Rice Bird Pest or Pet?” pp. 14-17.
Clench, Mary. Gill, Frank. Austin, Oliver. “Passeriform” britannica.com Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 8 Jan 2018, https://www.britannica.com/animal/passeriform/Skeleton, 12 Nov 2019.
“Java Sparrow (Lonchura oryzivora)” hbw.com Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive, Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A., de Juana, E., Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive, https://www.hbw.com/species/java-sparrow-lonchura-oryzivora, 12 Nov 2019.
“The Java Sparrow (Rice Bird)” finchinfo.com Finch Information Center, Finch Information Center, 2016, http://www.finchinfo.com/birds/finches/species/java_sparrow.php, 11 Nov 2019.
My apologies for improper MLA formatting, Weebly disallowed me from properly formatting this essay by lacking the tools necessary to do so.