This story is in partnership with WILDLIFE INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS & EDITORS, a nonprofit journalism organization exposing wildlife crime and exploitation of nature.

T he bird man is at his desk, vaping and working the phone. Fly traps coated with insects dangle from the ceiling. Tigers and lions pace fenced enclosures in the backyard. Tilting in his swivel chair — legs crossed, plaid short-sleeve shirt unbuttoned to the chest, reading glasses propped on his balding head — Gideon Fourie takes a long drag on his blue vape and begins to tell me how he became one of South Africa’s leading parrot traders.

“The African grey is the best talking and friendly [sic] bird in the world,” Fourie says, rolling the R’s in his heavily Afrikaans-­inflected English. He swats a tabby cat off the brown

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