Article: Captive breeding seen as lifeline for amphibians

[TJ]

There was an interesting Reuters dispatch out of Oslo today titled "Captive breeding seen as lifeline for amphibians," by Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle. Here are some excerpts:

<font color="0077aa">Amphibian experts are likely to urge captive breeding to slow a catastrophic rate of extinctions threatening a third of all species of frogs and salamanders, a leading scientist said.

A meeting of about 60 scientists in Washington from Sept. 17-20 is set to launch an action plan including captive breeding after a bleak 2004 assessment showed that a third of all species were under threat of extinction.

Apart from captive breeding, the plan includes extending protected areas, better management of fresh water and research into the fungus.

Captive breeding, likely in zoos and aquariums in the United States and Europe, would probably cost tens of million of dollars a year to save the 200 or so most threatened species. Funding could come from governments and international agencies.

"In many cases, captive colonies will be our only short-term way of avoiding extinction," said Claude Gascon, a senior vice-president at Conservation International who is convening the talks.

One problem will be to slow the spread of the fungus, chytridiomycosis, which smothers amphibians' skin. "The fungus is knocking out species...It impedes the ability of their skin to absorb oxygen and just suffocates them. It's the equivalent of us ingesting a fungus that takes over our lungs," Gascon said. "We don't know if the fungus has always been present and is becoming more virulent because of other stresses. Or has it jumped from another group, like avian flu?" he said.
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[edward]

Except that there is insufficient space in Zoos and Aquarias to work with the number of species that are in trouble.

Ed

 

[TJ]

That's where we come in, Ed

 

[jennifer]

I hope you're right, Tim. But I think we hobbyists will never have the credibility to be considered a serious part of the prevention of extinction. Sadly, hobbyists are more often viewed as part of the problem because they create markets for the capture and sale of animals.

 

[edward]

Hi Jen,
that is one of the problems but here in the USA, one of the percieved problems is caused by the lack of any data on the origin and relatedness of the animals. Another problem is the turn over in people who keep or work with species. (Maybe not with the caudates at this time but with other species there is a kind of wave form that follows the dollar value of the animal. Once the species drops to a certain point, people divest themselves of the species, pattern/color morph and only a few people keep them resulting in a cyclical loss of the genetics available in the captive sector.

Ed

 

[joseph]

I agree with what was said about hobbyists being considered the problem. Afterall their is always that person who is going to go out and then get themselves into trouble with poaching or similar.

Totally unrelated but in the case of the killfish hobby their has been an attempt at what is called a "Species Maintenance Program." Members agree to keep the fish for 2 years, give updates on #'s every once in a while, and trade stock among members of the program. However it isn't met with much enthusiasm...perhaps partly because some of the species are easily available elsewhere with no strings attached.

Caudates may be different though.

Just a few thoughts.

(Message edited by fishkeeper on September 11, 2005)

 

[mike]

Regardless of whether or not hobbyists breeding amphibians will ever be valuable for reintroduction studies or maintaining critically endangered amphibians, there is potential for well-established hobbiest-led breeding programs reducing collection pressure on wild populations. I was recently in three pet stores in the last 10 days, and noticed a number of their herps were clearly marked as 'captive bred.' I see that as a positive sign.

Of course, all three stores also had some obviously wild-caught animals, including one with a tank full of some Cynops (with missing arms, digits, etc). However, the health of the captive bred animals was clearly better than those of the wild-caught, something that I doubt would be missed by the average consumer looking for a pet.

On a related note, here's an interesting article that tries to quantify some of the numbers of animals coming into and going out of the US.

http://mister-toad.com/pubs/Schlaepfer_etlal_2005bioscience.pdf

Mike

 

[edward]

Hi Mike,
I need to read over that more carefully but I am not sure all of their assumptions are correct in table four as (if I remember correctly) a couple of Graptemys species are bred in mass at some of the farms and as a consequence not all are wild caught.
But thanks for the link.

Ed

 

[TJ]

Very interesting article, Mike.

That's pretty amazing: 1.6 million Cynops orientalis imported into the U.S. over a recent 5-year-period. Given the small number of serious hobbyists/breeders, its hard to see how captive breeding could have much impact in a case like this, at least as long as WC imports are so easily available. But I could see how it could have an impact in the case of rarer species like Cynops ensicauda that wouldn't normally appear in your average U.S. pet shop but are nevertheless being overcollected in the wild.

I wonder what the deal is with the inclusion on the list of amphibians exported from the U.S. of non-native species like Cynops pyrrhogaster (113,000 over 5 years). Reexport maybe? There's no mention of imports of this species...

 

[ralf]

First, let's keep in mind that there are already efforts to coordinate and support captive breeding by hobbyists like the US Caudate Registry (USCR) and the different studbooks for genera respectively species in Europe. These initiatives, however, depend on participation and contribution by the keepers.
A lot of animal imports from Asia to Europe come via the U.S. West Coast I was told, but I don't know if this has to be considered as transit or reexport (like Bombina orientalis).
It's also hard to believe that only 47 Ambystomas were exported and I don't see any Paramesotritons on that list (see table 1 in article linked above).

 

[mike]

I see two main points coming out of this paper.

First is the number of animals brought into the US(fig 1 - 14.7 million amphibians imported to the US in that time period). What does this mean for wild populations?

Second is how poorly documented many of these imports are. Ed and Ralf, this second point is related to what you bring up. In table four, they have a footnote mentioning that a number of turtles (including Graptemys) may have been mislabeled as 'wild caught' in the federal database, which seems like it corresponds with what you mentioned, Ed. Ralf, while table one does only list 47 Ambystoma as exports, the authors make clear that a huge number of imported animals are not identified to species in the database. The authors feel "The lack of accurate species-level data is particularly worrisome . . ."(pg 261).

I suspect that Ralf is right about the reexport from the US west coast.

One of the things I like about this article is that it tries to quantify the numbers of animals removed from the wild for the animal trade. I agree that it seems like a daunting task to replace these huge numbers of wild caught animals with captive-bred individuals, but I believe it's possible to at least make an important dent. If any of you know of any good literature that documents success stories in captive breeding in reducing demand for heavily-collected animals (especially herps, but anything is good), I'd like to hear about it.

All the best,

Mike

 

[mark]

I wonder, as a comparison, what the captive bred figures were in the US for the same time period? I'm guessing negligible.

In my opinion the pet industry does not aim it's caudate trade at hobbyists but at impulse buyers (there are exceptions, but rare) and impulse purchases rely on low prices which are unlikely to be achieved with CB specimens due to the effort and time required to raise the animals to a salable size. The trade in WC animals will therefore only cease when the wild populations become diminished to the extent that it is hard to collect in large numbers and the price per animal rises. I’m guessing that the bulk of the WC imports end up in non-specialist pet shops who wouldn’t be interested in selling animals at CB prices. The demand for WC animals is driven by price and the price is affected by many factors such as ease of collection, local protection and the economic prosperity of the animals’ homeland. Species that breed prolifically in captivity such as P.waltl will seriously dent the demand for WC specimens but species that are harder to breed or breed in small numbers will continue to suffer wild collection for a long time, regardless of the hobbyists efforts.

 

[mindy]

There used to be a large fishless freshwater pond where I grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. While I was attending school in California I learned that the entire area was drained and built over with houses. There should have been some sort of environmental effort to capture and at least relocate the amphibians and turtles that lived there. You can talk ill of hobbyist collecting wild specimins all you want, but I fear that one day the only caudates that prosper will be the ones that were collected, captively bred, and exchanged within the pet market. The habitats that are not developed by surburbia will be polluted by industries worlds away.

 

[edward]

Habitat destruction (including pollution) overall is still probably the highest risk for species in the wild but what also can happen is that before a species can be protected it has become rare and thus more desirable. There is often then a race to get all that can be collected before the legislation prohibits the take of the animal.
But in animals that have a limited range to begin with, it doesn't take that much to push it into a decline. For example as cited in the article the Chinese Cave Gecko was extirpated at the location where it was discovered by collection for the pet trade before it had even been described.....

Mark, keep in mind that the goverment has a different definition of cb as F1 from wc animals are not considered cb and are reported as wc (according to the article under CITES) so what we percieve to be cb is different from the reported figures.

Ed

 

[mike]

Like Ed wrote, habitat destruction is a huge problem. Many of us probably have similar personal examples of habitat destruction like you do, Mindy. But we don't have to sit back and watch everything turn into suburbs - there are a lot of ways to fight it, through donations to land trusts (http://www.lta.org/ or http://nature.org/) to becoming politically involved with legislation on both local (protecting open space, supporting smart growth over urban sprawl) and national levels (keeping wilderness areas from being clearcut/overused, supporting the endangered species act).

Ed, what is the legal definition under CITES for something to be cb rather than wc?

Mike

 

[mike]

Also, to Mark's point, does anyone here know of any set of private or government data that would give an idea of the numbers of captive-bred herps produced in the US or any other country? To me it seems like I see captive bred animals more frequently in pet shops than I did 10 years ago. I don't attend big pet expos, so i don't have a sense for how the relative numbers of wc and cb animals have changed over time in those sort of things.

 

[edward]

Hi Mike,

F2 and later.

As for the numbers of cb animals, I doubt there are any correct numbers unless the species required a permit or was shipped out of the country.
You are correct in that there are more species available that are cb (and more of that species being bred) than there once was however there are also more wc species available as more and more localities become available to collection so I think the overall percentages have not really changed......

I thought I saw a paper that quantified some of this, I'll have to look for it now.


Ed

 

[mark]

On a less serious note, I have to ask... who or what ate nearly 4 million bullfrogs? French ex-pats, acclimatized to the larger US portions choosing catesbeiana over esculenta perhaps?

 

[joan]

Backwoods hicks have a taste for Rana too. They're big and cheap and full of protein. Tastes like chicken.

 

[mike]

Hi Ed,

Thanks for looking for that reference, I'd like to see it.

Mmmmmm bullfrog legs. . .

Mike