Over the past decade, thousands of African gray parrots have been exported from the Democratic Republic of Congo despite a ban on their international trade. The endangered species, Psittacus erithacus, was listed under Appendix I of CITES, the global wildlife trade convention, in 2016, which would have prohibited its commercial trade, but the DRC government resisted the move. Kinshasa was asked to conduct a comprehensive species' population survey to justify continued trade of the birds, but to date still hasn't carried one out. Meanwhile, the wholesale capture and export of birds has continued, and the DRC government has finally taken action to prohibit the capture and sale of this iconic species.