Birdwatching Vietnam Club

There is growing international and domestic demand for live birds for sale as pets, wild meat and for medical research. It has been estimated that approximately four million live birds are transported around the globe each year. Southeast Asia is a major hub for this illegal trade with birds being sourced throughout most countries and moving into the major wildlife trade markets of Southern China, Singapore, Indonesia and Bangkok.

Although there were indications that the wild bird trade in Hanoi was increasing; recent studies have shown there has been a significant decline in the illegal trade compared to monitoring surveys carried out in 2000 and 2003. Results indicated that the reason for this decline in trade was due to law enforcement efforts of the Dept. of Animal Health in trying to eliminate the threat of Avian Influenza H5N1.

Monitoring of the open wild bird markets in Hanoi has been extremely limited to only three short periods. This restricts our understanding to the impacts of interventions by different agencies to help recommend the most effective methods to tackle this illegal trade.

The Vietnam Bird-watching Club with the Wildlife Conservation Society are establishing a monitoring program of the main wild bird markets in Hanoi with a goal to collect information that can be used to help end this illegal trade.

Every three months all major wild bird vendors in Hanoi will be visited and counts will be made of all species present. These results will then be disseminated to the relevant government agencies and NGOs to facilitate law enforcement action.

We are seeking volunteers to join these surveys and help see the end of the illegal bird trade in Hanoi. As the number is vendors is limited (between 30-50 shops) we would hope to have anywhere from 15-30 people involved who would be willing to give up at most one hour of their morning for this work.  All volunteers will be provided with training in species identification and survey methods by members of VBC prior to

We hope to start the first surveys this October so please email us to confirm your interest and we will be in touch with details of the first meeting about this initiative!

If you are interested please contact: