Thirty years of trade data suggests population declines in a once common songbird in Indonesia

In Indonesia, the songbird trade is causing serious declines in many native species. Much of this trade is unregulated or illegal but nevertheless occurs openly in physical wildlife markets and online. Here, we report on the trade in a once common songbird, the Sunda laughingthrush (Garrulax palliatus), using compiled market data from 365 bird market surveys across a 30-year period. We found a total of 5,281 birds for sale, with the species encountered in roughly two-thirds of the visits. We observed a significant decrease in the number of Sunda laughingthrushes offered over time from ~ 50 birds/survey in the 1990s to ~ 20 birds/survey in the 2000s and < 10 birds/survey in the 2010s, as well as a significant increase in the market price of the species, suggesting declining populations. In line with the countrywide findings, we found a decrease in the number of the species in the bird markets of Medan, but we did not find a similar decrease in Jakarta, suggesting a complex pattern of availability and demand. Nevertheless, this study shows that continued trapping for trade, if left unchecked, poses a significant risk to the species. We conclude that a more proactive stance from the government, including increasing levels of protection and enforcement of existing regulations, community engagement and possibly targeted captive breeding may alleviate the pressure on remaining wild populations. Our study offers a model whereby analysis of wildlife trade over extended periods of time covering vast geographic regions may offer insights that are easily missed when working in a too focused manner on single markets over short periods of time.