the frustration is that, you know, parrots are the third most popular pet in this country, excluding tropical fish.

But this is an enormous, enormous segment of the pet population, and yet, people are not recognizing that there's a problem with parrots, that there are unwanted parrots.

Quaker Parakeets actually have- - [Bill] Karen Windsor is the executive director of Foster Parrots, a Rhode Island based sanctuary for exotic birds that have been abandoned, or relinquished by their previous owners, who found the animals too difficult to care for.

Her husband, Mark Johnson, then a Boston area potter, wanted a bird for his studio, and rapidly became a caretaker for other birds in the late 1980s.

- He answered an ad and bought a blue and gold macaw for a companion in his pottery.

And the same day he bought this macaw and was walking down the walk, a neighbor came running up with her conure, and said, "Do you want, will you take this bird, too?

"I don't want this bird."

And so, he bought his first bird and rescued his first bird on the same day.

- [Bill] Windsor says that from there Johnson found himself on the receiving end of more and more exotic birds.

- It snowballed, you know?

People would see these birds, and they would say, "Hey, I have a bird that I don't want."

- [Bill] Johnson ultimately moved to a larger location, and formed Foster Parrots with the hope of adopting them out.

But for many of the parrots, that was not an option.

- A lot of these birds were wild caught, didn't like people, had behavioral issues, or medical issues that precluded them from adoption, and they were never gonna go anywhere.

And so, you know, that's when it's, you know, it began to dawn on us that, you know, we do need sanctuary.

There is a place for these birds.

- [Bill] So in 2007, they moved again to another location, the former Chickadee Farms in Hopkinton.

- My husband walked through this abandoned building, and he said, "This is it.

"We can do something here," which terrified me.

I knew how much work it was going to be.

- [Bill] And the hard work and generous donations paid off.

Over the years, Foster Parrots grew to take on hundreds of exotic birds, as well as a handful of other animals.

In 2014, fresh out of Tufts University with a degree in veterinary medicine, Danika Oriol-Morway began working with them as their director.

- As soon as I graduated, I was looking for a job.

I'm an animal welfare activist, and I saw posting for a parrot sanctuary, and I was not a parrot person before coming here.

I worked with wolves, and horses, and companion animals.

So I was like, "Okay, let's check this out, "and see if I can learn something."

- While Oriol-Morway says she has indeed learned a lot, she's also brought a public policy lens to Foster Parrots with examination of the global illicit bird trade, as well as domestic breeding here in the United States.

What is it like, or what do you imagine at least that it's like for a bird that lives inside a cage for decades?

What kind of quality of life reduction do they experience?

- That's a great question.

Captivity is inherent cruelty for a wild animal, as it is for a human.

I mean, we are not, no being is meant to be stuck in a cage.

Parrots are flighted.

They have one of the most magical gifts that nature can give us.

They have, and we rob them of that.

- [Bill] In their new environment, the birds thrived.

But on the morning of April 1st, 2021, Karen Windsor got some devastating news.

- I woke up at 5:00 a.m. to a phone call from one of my employees, who said that the building is on fire, and it's hard to describe the horror, because this is an old building, you know, not built for parrots.

- I live up in Boston, and I received a phone call probably shortly after 5:00 a.m. from Karen, and I'm sorry, I'm gonna try my best to get through this story, but she called me, and she's just crying, (birds squawking) and she says, "The building's on fire."

And I was like, "What?"

And she was like, "The sanctuary is on fire."

- [Bill] The building had suffered an electrical fire, and though its alarm system was wired directly to the local fire departments, the fire quickly spread through the facility.

- I've never experienced anything like that.

Visually, I couldn't even understand what I was looking at.

I didn't know if animals had gotten out, you know?

So it was this surreal experience of living your worst nightmare.

I mean, anybody who works in animal welfare, anybody who is responsible for a sanctuary, natural disasters, fires are the thing that keep you up at night.

- [Bill] The north wing of the sanctuary was lost, and with it, 96 birds perished.

(birds squawking) - Only two birds made it out of that section of the building, Rose, our scarlet macaw, and Buddy, a umbrella cockatoo.

But we lost all our cockatoos, our entire cockatoo colony, our Quaker colony.

It was devastating.

- In the months after the fire, members of the region's animal welfare community, as well as residents of the surrounding area, were very supportive.

What's this guy right here?

Who's this?

Today, Foster Parrots is rebounding, still providing shelter and care for over 300 birds.

- We've been slowly bringing the remaining building back up to, you know, where we can live in it, and function in it.

We already have been fundraising to rebuild the part that we lost, and that will hopefully start being built within the next year, and at that point, we are working on needing to renovate the rest of the building as well, because the conditions are still not, they're not good, you know?

It's still a chicken coop.

It's still an old building.

- [Bill] Karen Windsor remains grateful for all the goodwill the tragedy generated, and she hopes for many it is a wake up call.

- Well, what I would like the world to take away is, you know, we understand people's love for parrots, and we love them, too, but we don't have the right to take them away from the world that they were meant to live in, to extract them from the wild, and parrots as pets, putting a bird in a cage, this is an animal that was born to inherit the sky, and we take that animal, and we put it in a cage.

Wow.

I mean, that's not okay, and it's just, it's, you know, it's admiring that animal that, this beautiful, beautiful bird, and wanting to possess it, and I think what people need to do is instead, you know what?

Take your money and go to South America, and watch them fly free.

This is where they belong.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - And that's our broadcast this evening.