Zoos Hit by Bird Thieves Tighten Security

Zoos in Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Santa Barbara and San Diego have strengthened security in the wake of a series of nighttime break-ins by what officials think is a ring of professional thieves who have snatched more than two dozen rare cockatoos and parrots from their cages and apparently sold them on the bird black market.

The thieves, who seemed to know precisely which birds were of the most value, broke into the zoos in a string of 10 incidents, beginning last August and continuing through April, authorities reported Friday.

Cutting their way through the aviary cages, the thieves walked off with birds worth a total of more than $50,000. Detectives working the cases report no clues in their search for the culprits.

L.A. Zoo Hit Hard

Hardest hit was the Los Angeles Zoo where, on five separate dates, two Leadbetter cockatoos, two black palm cockatoos, two sulfur-crested cockatoos and two orange and green kea birds were taken, according to Ed Alonso, the zoo’s animal collection manager. The cockatoos were valued at about $5,000 each, he said.

Alonso and other authorities said the birds have probably been sold in a black market of unscrupulous private bird fanciers. “The pet trade has always been big on parrot-type birds like these,” he said.

Los Angeles zoo spokeswoman Lora LaMarca said “somebody would have to know their birds and be relatively familiar with the zoo” to pull off these crimes.

She said the missing animals are hard to come by legally; their importation is limited by federal law to zoos and other institutions. “You can’t just walk into a pet shop and buy them or sell them,” she said.

LaMarca said the city-owned Griffith Park facility has added a night security guard and “some fairly high-tech security precautions” in the wake of the break-ins.

Nine birds valued at about $13,000 were stolen from the Santa Ana Zoo, said zoo director Claudia Collier.

Cut Through Fence

After closing time, thieves cut through the zoo’s outer perimeter chain-link fence along the Santa Ana Freeway and then cut into the chain-link cages that housed the parrots, she said.

Stolen from the Santa Ana Zoo were three scarlet macaws, which are an endangered species, along with two blue and gold macaws, two double yellow-head Amazon parrots and two green-winged macaws.

“They knew what they were doing,” she said. “They took the most valuable in our collection.”

Collier said she is “quite confident” that all four Santa Ana thefts were committed by the same person or persons. Collier added: “I would not be at all surprised if it were the same people” who hit the other zoos.

“We now have nighttime security on the grounds, and we’re installing a fence along the freeway that will be monitored. If someone climbs or breaks the fence, it will set off an alarm.”

Santa Barbara zoo spokeswoman Nancy Hollenbeck reported that thieves took “eight of the most valuable birds in our collection”--some worth as much as $7,000--in February. Missing are three palm cockatoos, four eclectus parrots and one hyacinth macaw. Their total worth is estimated at $26,500.

Alarm Installed

After the break-in, “we put an alarm on the aviary and hired a full-time night security guard,” she said.

Hollenbeck said she doubts that the birds “are still in California. Parrots have become very chic pets and there are bird traders or private collectors who will buy them on the black market with no questions asked.” There have been no thefts at the San Diego Zoo, a spokesman there said, but Bill Toone, associate curator of birds at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, reported: “Right now stealing birds is big business. . . . It happens very frequently.”

Toone said a cockatoo was taken from the park last November and a macaw was stolen earlier this summer.

Legitimate pet shop owners and bird fanciers reacted with alarm to the news Friday.

“I have no idea where they would go,” said Leslyn Newman, president of the South Pasadena-based National Retail Pet Store and Growers Assn. “They certainly wouldn’t be sold in pet stores.”

Luella Walton, executive manager of the New Bird Assn. of California, headquartered in the San Fernando Valley, said she feared that the recipients of the stolen birds are bird lovers whose passion for the creatures had overcome their honesty.

“I’m afraid they were sold to some motivated-type person, real bird lovers,” she said. “Myself, if I knew a bird was stolen, I wouldn’t want it, but some of these birds are so gorgeous that a lot of people would.”

Times staff writers Mark Landsbaum in Santa Ana and Kathie Bozanich in San Diego contributed to this story.