DOI: 10.5061/dryad.rn8pk0pnr
title: Illegal trade of birds using Facebook in Argentina

description: The illegal trade of wild birds is a large threat to biodiversity and
 sellers often use social media to traffic wildlife. By monitoring and
 characterizing the trade of wild and domestic birds on Facebook, we show
 that this illegal e-commerce remains widespread throughout Argentina,
 despite a decrease in activity in 2023 compared to 2017, highlighting the
 persistence and magnitude of this issue. In 2017, we found 96,354 users in
 127 buying/selling groups in 18 provinces, of which 61% were public. In
 2023, we found 58,647 users in 76 groups in 14 provinces, of which 66%
 were public. Analyzing one group in 2017 and two groups in 2023, we found
 67 bird species were offered for sale. All birds for sale in these groups
 had illegal origins (i.e., without authorized bands or permits), including
 two Endangered and one Near Threatened species. Passerines (mainly
 Thraupidae, Fringilidae, and Cardinalidae species) were the most offered
 group, but parrots, raptors, and other bird groups were also
 available. Saltator aurantiirostris (Golden-billed saltator) was
 most frequently offered for sale and had the highest interest from users
 in the two largest analyzed groups. The Endangered Gubernatrix cristata
 (Yellow cardinal) reached the highest price (up to 328 USD), it was also
 frequently offered for sale (5th position in 2017) and had high user
 interest (2nd in 2017). We found that Facebook was frequently used for
 illegal bird trade in Argentina, including species of conservation
 concern, which can threaten a number of species. We call for coordinated
 and interdisciplinary actions that engage authorities, social media
 companies, and local communities, which will be needed to enact top-down
 and bottom-up measures to continue reducing and eventually halting
 wildlife-related illegal activities. 
description: <em>Data collection</em> We
 created a Facebook user account and anonymously collected all data without
 interacting directly with other users (i.e., passive collection). No
 personal, private, or identifiable information was obtained, ensuring
 compliance with ethical guidelines for research involving humans. We
 conducted the same search twice, in March 2017 and in April 2023, using
 four terms related to buying and selling birds in Spanish
 (<em>aves</em>, <em>pájaros</em>,
 <em>venta</em>, and <em>compra</em>) and the names
 of 23 Argentinean provinces and the federal capital district through the
 inbuilt ‘search’ function. From each identified group, we collected: 1)
 the province where the group was based, 2) the type of group (i.e.; public
 for open groups and closed for groups where authorization from the group
 administrator is required), 3) the number of users, and 4) the average
 number of posts per year. We conducted a detailed
 analysis of three buy/sell groups. In 2017, we analyzed one of the largest
 groups in the country located in La Pampa province (hereafter, ‘2017 La
 Pampa’). Since most of the authors were located in this province, we had a
 deeper knowledge of the local bird species, management authorities, and
 administration process of natural resources. Six years later, we analyzed
 a different group in La Pampa province (‘2023 La Pampa’) as well as a
 group covering the whole country (‘2023 national’). We
 identified bird species for sale by focusing on the ‘Recent media’ section
 of each group, which contained user-generated photos and videos. We
 excluded text posts since sellers do not use scientific names and the same
 common names could refer to various species. Once we identified a species
 in a photo or a video, we searched the group for posts related to this
 species. For each species, we included up to the first 20 posts that were
 identified by the search engine, but only if they related to the sale of
 the species. Next, we recorded the range of prices for each species in USD
 based on official pesos prices in 2017 and 2023 exchange rates,
 respectively, for each year. We also recorded the origin of the species
 (i.e., native to La Pampa province, native to Argentina but does not
 naturally occur in La Pampa province, exotic species, or domestic species
 that have been genetically modified from their wild ancestors through
 artificial selection to serve human purposes), as well as the conservation
 status and population trend of the species according to the IUCN Red List
 of Threatened Species (IUCN 2023). Finally, we specified if the species
 was on the list of seized birds in Argentina in 2020 (Grisolia and
 Grosskopf 2021). <em>Statistical
 analysis</em> We tested the change in the number
 of groups and total users per province between 2017 and 2023 using a
 Wilcoxon test and the relation between the number of users per province
 and the human population for the same province (INDEC 2012) using
 Spearman’s correlation at a significance level of 0.05. We report the mean
 ± S.E. (Range). For the selected groups, we estimated
 the ‘offer’ of each species and the ‘interest’ that users had in each
 species. The ‘offer’ was defined as the relative percentage of posts in
 which birds of a given species were offered for sale, while the ‘interest’
 represented the relative percentage of user interaction with each species.
 To calculate these values, we first determined the number of days over
 which the 20 most recent posts offering a particular species for sale had
 been made, which is the ‘observed time’ for this species, under the
 assumption that group activity remained constant over time. For the
 relative percentage of offers, we used the number of posts per species
 (i.e., 1-20). For the relative interest metric, we used the number of
 comments and ‘likes’ of each post (ensuring that each user interaction was
 counted only once per post, even if the same person liked and also
 commented on the same post) as a surrogate of the interests of users.
 Then, we obtained these values based on the ‘total time group has existed’
 (2017 La Pampa: 941 days, 2023 La Pampa: 3,170 days, 2023 national: 1,014
 days) using the following equations, where <em>i </em>equals
 each species and k denotes the total number of species offered for sale in
 each analyzed group. (See the equations in the published paper by López et
 al. 2025 Ornithological Applications).
description: # Illegal trade of birds using Facebook in Argentina
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.rn8pk0pnr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.rn8pk0pnr) ## Description of the data and file structure #### File: Lopez\_et\_al\_2025\_DataSet.xlsx **Description:** Facebook groups we found in 2017 and 2023. Bird species we found in one group in 2017 (La Pampa) and two groups in 2023 (La Pampa and National). ##### Variables * FacebookGroups: GroupID, Year, Province, Group_Type, Users, Posts. "NA" is information that is not available because the number of posts was not reported in some groups. * BirdSpecies: Species, English_Name, Spanish_Name, Family, Order, Days, the last 20 USD prices, and the last 20 numbers of Comments_and_likes as subrogates of interest from users, recorded in each analyzed group (2017 La Pampa, 2023 La Pampa, and 2023 National). So, each variable consists of the `[comments and likes or price]_[1-20]_[FB group]`. "NA" is information not applicable because there were fewer than 20 posts for some offered species. ## Code/software Excel