Bird Care Ethics Question

[Yodra]

There's a botanical garden very close to my house, and they have several rescue birds living there. Being a lover of birds, and having a little experience with training, I thought it would be a good experience to volunteer there, helping to care for the birds, maybe work my way up to assisting with training and such. I've never seen anyone training the birds or interacting with them, but I figured they just did it at specific times or when the garden is closed. However when I offered to volunteer I was turned away, to my great surprise. Surely they didn't have so many bird people volunteering that there was nothing at all I could do to be helpful?

Actually, it turned out to be just about as far from that as you could get. Apparently the supervisor of the gardens is the only person who ever interacts with the birds in any way, because the man feels it would be too dangerous to have anyone else interacting with them, on account of their being rescue birds. Absolutely no effort has been made to improve these birds lives, to socialize them or allow them to learn to enjoy human company, or even to educate visitors about why these poor birds needed re-homing in the first place. Six of the birds (macaws) are kept in two small aviaries, perhaps 2 feet across each, and the other three are in individual cages best described as "maybe adequate", which I do not believe they ever leave.

In addition, these birds are on display for guests to the gardens. Now I generally have no problem with animals being available for viewing, assuming they are cared for properly, but this situation struck me as very wrong. Either the birds are phobic, territorial, or poorly treated enough that they would bite at any opportunity, as the garden director implied, making it cruel to force visitors on them; or the birds don't have any truly crippling behavior problems, meaning that as far as I am concerned they deserve at least basic taming to help with the stress of veterinary care. Now, I've seen these birds several times, and not once have I seen one behave in a phobic, territorial, or vicious manner. A few of them are talkers, and seem to actively ask for human attention, eagerly repeating what they can whenever people are nearby.

I by no means intend to imply that I know the whole story here, but this seems wrong to me. I cannot imagine that anyone who really knew what they were doing would completely write off nine birds that appear more comfortable humans than many of the birds for sale in pet stores, to the point that they would actively discourage people from trying even the most gradual attempts at taming. To me this seems like neglect, a complete ignoring of the intellectual and emotional needs of these parrots. I would really like to hear what people have to say about this situation.


TL;DR
Birds are bored in small enclosures, no taming or training at all, not a true aviary environment, do you think this is okay?

[shiraartain]

Definitely could be better. I have a friend who worked at a botanic garden in Texas and would send me pictures/videos of their birds. She interacted with them from outside their cages. Not sure about inside.

Perhaps these birds get upset if someone is within a certain range of the or you're misreading their body language? It does sound as if their enclosures are small, you can spearhead an initiative to build a larger area for them, perhaps locate a donor if the garden is willing to work with you.

[Wolf]

Unfortunately I don't have enough information to say much other than that the cages that you describe are too small. So at this time I must agree with shiraartain. At least it is a good place to begin and may be what it takes to get you in the door.