Tony Silva, also known as Antonio H. Silva (born 1960) is an American aviculturist and ornithologist, and the author of books and articles about parrots. From 1989 to 1992, he was curator of birds at Loro Parque, the largest parrot park in the world. In 1996, he was convicted of conspiring to smuggle rare parrots into the United States and of tax evasion.
Early life and career
Silva was born in Cuba in 1960 and immigrated to the United States with his parents at a young age. His parents encouraged his love of birds as a hobby to keep him out of trouble, and he began studying, collecting, and breeding birds at age nine. Silva became enamoured with parrots at age 10 when he discovered macaws at a local pet store. When he was in his teens, he became further enamoured after receiving a parakeet. Silva's aviary was originally financed by his father (who owned a company that manufactured television components), later supplemented by his own income from breeding parrots, judging parrot contests, and lecturing and writing about parrots.
Silva began writing articles about birds at age 16, and by age 20 he had published his first book. In 1981, Silva received the Silver Avy Award from the American Federation of Aviculture (AFA) for being the first in the U.S. to successfully breed slender-billed conures in captivity. Silva was self-taught and did not attend university, but by age 25 he was already regarded as an authority on parrots and was respected as a successful breeder. In 1986, Silva became midwestern regional vice-president of the AFA. By 1987, Silva was operating a pet shop called Tropifauna just outside of Chicago. In August 1989, Silva became Curator of Birds at Loro Parque, Tenerife, Canary Islands, the largest parrot park in the world—a position he held until January 1992. Silva travelled extensively to study parrots in the wild, and wrote hundreds of articles and multiple books about parrots.
Silva was well known as a conservationist: he was an outspoken opponent of poaching and smuggling, and he was involved in the early efforts to save the Spix's macaw. Although highly respected among aviculturists, he was viewed with skepticism by the scientific community. To some, Silva was merely a popularizer of others' ideas; to others, he was a "charlatan" who promoted wildlife conservation but who was suspected of engaging in illegal wildlife trade as early as 1980.
Smuggling
Shortly after Silva started selling birds, he is believed to have begun supplementing his own birds with birds obtained on the black market, before eventually moving into smuggling. Between at least 1986 and 1991, Silva conspired to smuggle protected birds valued at more than $1.3 million into the United States, neglecting to declare this income on his taxes. While he was working at Loro Parque, Silva's mother ran the smuggling operation on his behalf.
Birds were provided by co-conspirators in South America and shipped to Argentina or Mexico before being offloaded and smuggled into the United States. Smuggled birds were often concealed by mixing them into a shipment of legally imported birds; Silva and his accomplices sneaked out the smuggled birds while the shipment was awaiting quarantine inspection. Other birds were smuggled in plastic tubes, cardboard containers, and false-bottomed suitcases. Many died during transport due to lack of food, water, and fresh air, and many more are thought to have died during capture. Birds were transported to a Chicago-area motel room where they were surgically sexed and furnished with forged documents so they could be sold on the legal market. Some of the birds were publicly advertised for sale in American Cage-bird Magazine.