Owls Are In Danger As Asians Are Getting Them As Pets After Their Harry Potter Obsession

Harry Potter fandom has reached its peak. It¡¯s because Harry has Hedwig, people want an owl as a pet. This has given a rise to illegal trade in the animal market for owls. Birds are being sold in Indonesia, India at a cheap price, which is taking away the bird¡¯s freedom.

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Since 2001, when the film was released, few hundreds of them were sold illegally in the Indonesian markets. However by 2016, the number has soared up to more than 13,000, according to researchers Vincent Nijman and Anna Nekaris of Oxford Brookes University in a paper in Global Ecology and Conservation.

In 2010, Ex Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh blamed Harry for the illegal sale of owls. ¡°Following Harry Potter, there seems to be a strange fascination even among the urban middle classes for presenting their children with owls,¡± he said.

The owls are being sold at the throwaway price of $10 to $30; a price which is affordable to most middle-class families too. The owls eventually die, as they don¡¯t adapt to captivity. In India, the owls are sold for medicinal purposes.

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J.K Rowling has also condemned the sales of owls as pets. "If anybody has been influenced by my books to think an owl would be happiest shut in a small cage and kept in a house, I would like to take this opportunity to say as forcefully as I can, ¡®you are wrong¡¯," she told the Guardian. "The owls in Harry Potter books were never intended to portray the true behaviour or preferences of real owls." she said.