In a rather bizarre incident, the Indonesian police have arrested a 37-year-old man, who allegedly was smuggling about two dozen cockatoos by stashing them into 1500 ml plastic bottles. The man was picked up by the police from Tanjung Perak port in Surabaya on the island, Java. The man reportedly had carried the birds from Makassar, Sulawesi.

The cockatoos had to be squeezed out of the plastic water bottles, which were placed in a crate, in the man's luggage. The birds seized by the custom officials were identified as belonging to two species of cockatoo after they were handed over to Indonesia's Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA). The lot majorly comprised of yellow-crested cockatoos, which have been classified as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 2007.

Richard Thomas, Global Communications Co-ordinator at Traffic International, was rather startled at the way these little birds were being transported. CNN reported him saying that such trafficking in plastic bottles "shows the lengths that some people will go to try to smuggle birds".

Cockatoos are native to Indonesia and their number stands at 7,000 presently. However, their population has been 'very heavily impacted' owing to illegal hunting and trade. Today, it is only on the island of Komodo that they are found in substantial numbers. They also suffer from low reproduction rates, accelerating their declining figures.

Such cases of wildlife trafficking have become common in recent years. In Indonesia, chiefly, this is seen as a big business wherein animals are captured from the wild and sold off to other countries as exotic pets or for meat and medicinal purposes. Parrots and cockatoos have huge demand in Europe and Southeast Asia.

Thus, in order to contain this issue; it is required of Governments of all nations to rope in stricter laws and give exemplary punishments to the guilty.