In southern suburbs of Prague, in village Osnice near town Jesenice, exists the biggest private parrots "rescue station" of the country. Officially licensed by state vet as an animals rescue station with maximum capacity of 500 birds. Currently in possesion of 489 parrots, mostly of large attractive species. The owner of this place currently faces a huge fine due to running an unlicensed zoo. Processing of this case is still not closed, but his objections were refused by authorities and it doesnt look good for him. I wrote "rescue station" in quotation marks because what he runs is basically a private zoo collection of hand-reared parrots used intesively for "meet and play with parrots" and "take a photo with tame parrot" programs sold for pretty high prices. He based his bussiness on this, together with luring donations for "poor rescue animals" from general public. Most of his birds are not rescues, but commercially bought birds directly from breeders. Also, he refuses to let any of his birds go into adoptions or to "rescue" any smaller birds like budgerigars, corelas, roselas - the most commonly kept exotic species where a rescue station would maybe make some sense. Link
Seeing antics like this makes me despise the word "rescue" which while it is still legit in some cases, the word is basically used as a shield by exotic pet owners and menagerie owners to justify themselves and to show the world why they are better than everyone else.
