COMMON HILL MYNA

The hill mynas are popular cage birds, renowned for their ability to imitate speech. The widely
distributed common hill myna is the one most frequently seen in aviculture. Demand outstrips
captive breeding capacity, so they are rarely found in pet stores and usually purchased directly
from breeders or importers who can certify the birds are traded legally.[citation needed]

This species is widely distributed and locally common, and if adult stocks are safeguarded, it is
able to multiply quickly. On a worldwide scale, the IUCN thus considers the common hill myna
a Species of Least Concern. But in the 1990s, nearly 20,000 wild-caught birds, mostly adults and
juveniles, were brought into trade each year. In the central part of its range, G. r. intermedia
populations have declined markedly, especially in Thailand, which supplied much of the thriving
Western market. Its neighbor countries, from where exports were often limited due to political or
military reasons, nevertheless supplied a burgeoning domestic demand, and demand in the entire
region continues to be very high. In 1992, Thailand had the common hill myna put on CITES
Appendix III, to safeguard its stocks against collapsing. In 1997, at the request of the
Netherlands and the Philippines, the species was uplisted to CITES Appendix II. The Andaman
and Nicobar Islands subspecies G. r. andamanensis and (if valid) G. r. halibrecta, described as
"exceedingly common" in 1874, qualified as Near Threatened in 1991. The former is not at all
common anymore in the Nicobar Islands and the latter—if distinct—has a very limited range.[8]

Elsewhere, such as on the Philippines and in Laos, the decline has been more localized. It is also
becoming increasingly rare in the regions of northeastern India due to capture of fledged birds
for the illegal pet trade. In the Garo Hills region, however, the locals make artificial nests of a
split-bamboo framework covered with grass, and put them up in accessible positions in tall trees
in a forest clearing or at the edge of a small village to entice the mynas to breed there. The
villagers are thus able to extract the young at the proper time for easy hand-rearing, making
common hill myna farming a profitable, small-scale cottage industry. It helps to preserve the
environment, because the breeding birds are not removed from the population, while habitat
destruction is curtailed because the mynas will desert areas of extensive logging and prefer more
natural forest to plantations. As the mynas can be somewhat of a pest of fruit trees when too
numerous, an additional benefit to the locals is the inexpensive means of controlling the myna
population: failing stocks can be bolstered by putting out more nests than can be harvested, while
the maximum proportion of nestlings are taken when the population becomes too large.