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Anti-trafficking charter

This market is structurally exposed to laundering wild-caught birds as captive-bred. Denying it would be absurd, ignoring it would make us complicit. Here is what's documented, and what we do about it.

The facts

They don't come from us. They come from administrative inspections, a police operation, and public international trade data.

Over half
of the 160 UK breeding facilities inspected in 2023 and 2024 were found in breach
15
wild peregrines confirmed by DNA among birds declared captive-bred, in the UK police's Operation Tantallon
4,000 to 5,000
peregrines and hybrids exported each year on this market
88%
of those exports bound for the United Arab Emirates
Source : Breeding facility inspections conducted by UK authorities, 2023 and 2024
Source : Operation Tantallon, UK police, DNA analysis on seized birds
Source : CITES trade database and published research on the raptor trade

Why the fraud targets parentage, and nowhere else

Some buyers openly prefer wild-caught birds, for the purity of the bloodline and for speed. That preference is stated openly, it isn't a suspicion. It creates a price premium for a captured bird.

A captured bird, though, cannot be legally exported. So the only way to capture that premium is to present it as captive-bred. All the fraud in this market concentrates on one single point: declared parentage. Not transport, not health, not price. Origin.

That's why a platform that just checks whether documents exist is useless on this particular market: the documents always exist. What matters is what they describe, who asserted it, and what has been checked against something other than a declaration.

The line DNA testing doesn't cross

A parentage DNA test establishes that a bird is genetically compatible with its declared parents. It does not establish a place of birth. If the declared parents are themselves wild birds held in a breeding facility, the parentage will be confirmed and the bird will still descend from a captured line.

DNA says "comes from these parents". It does not say "born in captivity". We will never write the second claim in place of the first.

What a charter can and can't doA charter is not a substitute for a regulator, a police force, or a court. It sets out what we refuse to publish and what we suspend. It certifies nothing about the birds that stay listed. See the list of what we don't verify.

Our commitments

Five enforceable rules. They apply to every account, including the most established breeders.

C1

Captive-bred only

No listing for a bird taken from the wild, regardless of its administrative status in the country of origin. A bird declared captive-bred whose parentage cannot be documented will not be listed with wording that suggests otherwise.

C2

Closed ring and microchip required

A closed ring fitted on a chick cannot be fitted on a captured adult bird. It isn't sufficient on its own, but its absence, or an open ring presented as closed, stops the file review. The microchip number must appear on the documents and match the scanned reading.

C3

CITES-registered facility required for Appendix I

Any listing for a specimen listed under Appendix I requires a breeding facility registered with the CITES Secretariat, whose registration is checked before the listing goes live. Without that reference, the listing is not published.

C4

Reporting open to anyone, no account needed

Anyone can report a listing, a document, or a pattern of behaviour, including someone outside the market. We publish our turnaround time, and every decision is justified and logged in our internal record.

C5

Suspension possible without notice

An account, a listing, or a file can be suspended immediately as soon as a serious doubt exists about a bird's origin or a document's authenticity. The reason is notified, and the decision stays open to challenge, but it isn't negotiated beforehand.

The cost of this position, and why we accept it

What we loseThis charter rules out a real share of the market in the short term: sellers whose files don't hold up, buyers who explicitly want a wild-caught bird, and middlemen whose model depends on leaving no trace. That's volume, and we won't have it.
What we gainThe one thing that has value on this market over the medium term: a register whose entries hold up under scrutiny. A directory can be copied in a weekend. A track record of clean files can't.
The testThis is the only version that survives a journalist digging into it. Any softer stance reads well today and reads very badly the day someone goes back through the published files.
Report a bird, a listing, or a documentThe form is open with no account required, and it accepts anonymous reports. We publish our turnaround time, and every decision is justified and logged. Submit a report.