Police return 36 stolen parrots to Jerusalem Biblical Zoo after late night break-in

Border Police detectives return 36 parrots, among them several rare breeds, to Jerusalem’s Biblical Zoo after they were stolen and carried off to a village in the West Bank last night.

Three burglars are said to have carried out last night’s zoo break-in. Police arrested one suspect, a resident of southern Israel, for questioning, a spokesman says.

The birds are worth some NIS 1.2 million ($331,000) in total. Among the birds are six macaws, a Southern red-billed hornbill and 20 lorikeets.

Parrots from the macaw family are particularly sought after by bird traffickers and are considered an endangered species, with several breeds already extinct. The burglars stole macaws of the Hyacinth and blue-throated breeds.

Lorikeets, though targeted in illegal trafficking attempts, are less rare.

Police believe that the zoo burglary was one of several incidents perpetrated by the same gang of smugglers of late. Investigators are still trying to solve two recent break-ins at Gan-Garoo Zoo and a petting zoo in Kibbutz Beit Zera.

“The suspects, members of the group that stole the parrots, fled by travelling to the West Bank to the village of Hableh, next to Qalqilya,” a police spokesman says.

Though they have since been returned to the zoo, several of the birds are in poor health due to the difficult conditions the thieves transported and held them in, police say.