Monkey Business
To spend $15,000 on a trip motivated by the smuggling and importation of wild birds and mammals from an equatorial country is obscene. Humane societies and individuals are battling daily to prevent the wholesale exploitation and decimation of exotic wildlife by greedy pet-store owners and customers with no consciousness.
About 1 million birds alone arrive in the United States each year. Over the past six years, 225,000 arrived dead and 600,000 died in quarantine. This doesn’t even begin to count those killed during capture. Those facts alone should deter the likes of Shawn, who, being in the public eye, is acting as a role model promoting, supporting and encouraging this hideous trafficking.
Rachel Rosenthal
Los Angeles
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