There are many fantastical things in theHarry Potterworld you ca n’t have . Teleportation . Invisibility . A weird tween ’s ghost hanging out in your school bathroom . If you experience where to look , though , youcanbuy yourself a pet hooter likeHedwig . And that ’s not a great thing for the bird of night .
In Indonesia , researcher conceive that the popularity of theHarry Potterfranchise is conduct to a significant uptick in ignominious - mart owl trading , Naturereports .
A new study in the journalGlobal Ecology and Conservationexamined the issue of owl sale in 20 Bronx cheer markets on the Indonesian islands of Bali and Java , where wild - caught birds are sold as pets . In the early 2000s , owl were rare in these markets , but now , more owls from a miscellany of species are usable to corrupt , spelling bad intelligence for bird preservation . ( The first Indonesian transformation ofHarry Pottercame out in 2000 , and the first film was released in 2001 . ) In larger bird market , there might be 30 to 60 bird of night representing as many as eight species available at once , harmonize to the study . hooter made up less than 0.06 percent of the hiss in Indonesian birdie markets before 2002 , but after 2008 , they were 0.43 percent of the market .
While there could be other reasons for the increase in demand for hooter as pets , such as gravid net access allowing people to switch info on where to get the birds , the mankind ’s most famous male child wizard sure as shooting shares some of the blame . Look no further than the birds ' pop name : " Harry Potter birds . " They used to be know as " ghost birds , " the researchers write .
Technically , selling wild - catch owls is illegal , but the law is n’t well enforced . Indonesia does n’t supervise its aboriginal owl population , so it ’s hard to pin down exactly how this is affecting the numbers of idle owls in the region . But typically , nothing good comes of big number of gaga boo being sold as pets , especially when they ’re kept in sub - par conditions . The paper ’s authors recommend that owls be place on the commonwealth ’s protected specie list , with proficient Education Department for both boo bargainer and the populace on the illegality of buying and selling bird of night caught in the natural state . Maybe a " Save Hedwig " campaign is in order .
[ h / tNature ]
