Among the many inhabitants of Southeast Asia’s dense rainforests are hornbills — a group of birds that stand out with their raucous call, large, ostentatious beak and colorful feathers. Indonesia harbors 13 species, the most of any country in Asia, three of which are found nowhere else.
Hornbills are rapidly losing their homes as large swaths of Indonesian forests are cut down to make way for plantations, mining, dams, cities and other development, or are scorched by wildfires.
Trade in these birds also poses another serious threat. Hundreds of hornbills are entering the illegal trade in Indonesia, according to a new study published in the journal Wild, some of which are offered for sale online. They’re sold alive as pets or killed for their casques, the ivory-like appendages above their beaks, and their taxidermied heads, which are displayed as home décor.
To understand the scope of this trade, researchers analyzed police and customs confiscation data and surveyed online ads from 2015 to 2025. They learned that this illegal commerce is widespread and involves every Indonesian hornbill species and some from Africa and the Philippines as well. Most birds were sold alive, suggesting they’re bought as pets. Facebook was the preferred online marketplace.
“The scale of the hornbill trade in Indonesia is probably greater now than I’ve seen it in the past,” said study author and wildlife trade researcher Chris Shepherd from the U.S.-based Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s becoming, perhaps, trendier to keep hornbills.”
Indonesia is infamous for its songbird trade, which has caused what scientists dubbed the “Asian songbird crisis.” Each year, millions of songbirds, worth billions of dollars, are caught in the wild and sold in bird markets. They’re kept as pets or forced to compete in singing competitions. The trade has emptied the forests and pushed many bird species to near-extinction.
Like many songbirds, all hornbill species are protected under Indonesia’s laws, making it illegal to hunt, keep, buy, sell or transport the birds. While the songbird trade is extensively studied, there’s little data on hornbills. The new study sheds some light on this illicit activity.
Bird trade researcher Simon Bruslund from the Copenhagen Zoo said this study “is very relevant” to understanding the targeted trade in hornbills. “There seems to be a growing regional market for keeping nonnative hornbills in Asia, particularly with Philippine species in Indonesia and Indonesian species in India,” said Bruslund, who wasn’t an author on the study but helped identify the species sold online.
Seizure records revealed 126 incidents involving about 556 hornbills from 14 species, including the rufous hornbill (Buceros hydrocorax), also known as the Philippine hornbill, which is endemic to that country. Nearly half of the seizures, involving some 222 birds, were traded alive, likely intended for the pet trade. Parts of dead birds are also popular, including beaks and heads.
“The growing demand for hornbill heads as a decoration is a little bit shocking and confusing,” Shepherd said. “We’ve seen this in Africa suddenly skyrocket, and although it is not to the same scale in Southeast Asia, we are seeing more heads here.”
In 2025, researchers called for trade protections for African forest hornbills after they found more than 2,000 dried heads imported into the U.S. between 1999 and 2024. These protections were granted later that year under CITES, the global convention to regulate the trade in threatened wild plants and animals. Legal global commerce requires permits; birds that were seized by officials and recorded in the study were illegally traded.
The critically endangered helmeted hornbill (Rhinoplax vigil) topped the list of traded species, with 80 birds found in 13 incidents. Their casques are carved into decorative items, just like ivory. The unrelenting demand for casques, primarily from China, drove this unique bird from near-threatened status in 2015 to critically endangered just three years later.
The wreathed hornbill (Rhyticeros undulatus), a vulnerable species found across Southeast and South Asia, was also in high demand: Officials found 72 of the birds in 26 incidents. Other widely traded species include the knobbed hornbill (Rhyticeros cassidix) and rhinoceros hornbill (Buceros rhinoceros).
About two-thirds of the seizures involved other wildlife: live birds of prey, cockatoos, gibbons, and body parts from pangolins, bears, tigers and snakes.
More than 100 people were prosecuted for hornbill trafficking, according to the study. They faced prison sentences from a month to four years, and fines ranging from 500,000 to 100 million rupiah ($27.50 to $5,500 at current exchange rates).
The study also shed light on trafficking routes. East Java and Jakarta, two of the country’s main population centers, were the most prominent destinations for smuggled hornbills, while the largely forested island of Sulawesi was a major source. The international trade involved at least seven countries, with China being the most prominent destination.
This analysis is likely an underestimate, the researchers say, because seizures represent just a sliver of illegal commerce and the data excluded all cases that didn’t go to court.
While investigating the online trade, the researchers recorded 231 posts advertising hornbills from Indonesia. They documented 560 birds belonging to 16 species for sale, including one from Africa; the wreathed hornbill was the most popular. One advertiser on Tokopedia, Indonesia’s largest online marketplace, claimed to have a stock of 1,000 hornbills. Another said they had 100.
Ninety percent of sellers posted on Facebook, a platform preferred by wildlife traffickers, according to numerous reports and investigations. The highest online price was 42.5 million rupiah ($2,340) for the western long-tailed hornbill (Horizocerus albocristatus), endemic to West Africa.
“A lot of the hornbill trade has gone online, especially on Facebook,” Shepherd said. “There are Facebook groups dedicated to hornbill collectors and hornbill traders, and they have a lot of members.”
