150 African grey Parrots that were being smuggled from DRC through Uganda in boxes that had French labels were seized by the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) officials but the accused ran off during the verification of the correctness of the matter. The running away of the accused created doubts because as soon as they had been told to go get other documents from the Uganda Wildlife Authority for an alleged export delivery than they took off so they are seriously being searched for by the security agencies.
The fact that the accused were not accompanied to get the documents from UWA or monitored by the security, the key suspects could not be got since the destination of the parrots wasn’t Uganda. These parrots are among the allowed species to be brought in the country but since the exact number of them in the country is not known, the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) should get a wildlife trade policy so that the transported wildlife for trade is observed critically to avoid illegal wildlife trade and the formulation of businesses between locally official dealers and smugglers from other countries. There should also be regular sensitization, increase on sharing of information between the wildlife authority and the customs department to develop the trade policies and procedures that can change the wildlife.
