[Newticus]

I personally don't see a problem with wanting to breed rare species. Some one will always want one, it is human nature. So if you can captive breed rarer speices then it lesses the burden on wild speices. I will grant you though that $80,000 is an ungodly amount for a pair of birds. It is not necessarily the industialized pet industry like the Pet Smarts and what have you that creat those prices, it's the under ground and black market that help make those prices. We don't like to think about it but poaching is still a strong force, and I don't know too many pet stores here in Ontario that sell wild caught birds. You can find them on the internet though. I guess that is still the pet industry though.
The need to own rare things is not limited to animals, but it's worse because animals are sentient beings.
To be devils advocate, a lot of commonly kept parrots are endangered or protected. Does that mean that any one who keeps an amazon, African grey or macaw falls into the same catagory as those who want a black palm, or is it different because now there are many captive bred inviduals of the more common pet parrots and they don't cost $80,000 per pair? A lot of people still pay a rediculous amount of money for their birds, I should have paid 2,200 for my amazon if I didn't work for the store I bought him from and wasn't good friends with the manager. Does that I am similar to the person who wants to shell out for a pair of black palms?

Melanie