Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: thedoc on 24/04/2012 14:01:34
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Amphibian species around the world are subject to an increasing threat in the form of a fungus. Over 200 amphibian species are thought to have become extinct and the problem isn’t just restricted to frogs, toads and newts. New research suggests it could affect food security today...
Read a transcript of the interview by clicking here (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/2049/)
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Curses! A very interesting and worrying subject, me thinks. But alas, Doc, the link seems to be naff.
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That's better!
I think that the pet trade does have a great deal to answer for on the matter of population depletion in the wild and the spread of parasites. Though pet traders claim their animals to be bred in captivity, where the animal is CITES protected, all too often this a pack of lies. A so called tortoise 'farm' in Slovenia was nothing more than an enclosure housing 25 or so tortoises of both the Horsfield and Hermann species. Yet the 'farmer' had supposed incubation facilities for 2000 eggs! It was obvious that the animals being exported were in fact taken from the wild.
It is also the case that Chelonian Herpes and parasitic worms are all too often present in these imported animals.
If this can happen with tortoises, I'm sure it can happen with other species. The Axolotl has become something of a trendy pet and I am sure that this is by far the greatest reason for its decline in the wild. Since the majority of pet traders care only about profit, not the animals they trade in, I would not be surprised to find that this was the cause of the spread of the fungus.
All too often, 'pet' owners (and I use that term very loosely) get bored with their pet, or can't be bothered to look after them any more, so the animal (whatever it may be) may be released into the wild. Just a few miles from me is Hall Place (http://www.hallplace.org.uk/). In the greenhouse is a fish pond and in the pond there are Red Ear and Yellow Belly Sliders. Upon making enquiries, I was told that these North American turtles had not been acquired, they just appeared. Obviously some person or persons who had bought these as pets either got bored with them or couldn't cope with them as they grew too big for their tanks', so they smuggled them into the greenhouse. Perhaps fortunate for these turtles, though being under glass, they will be lacking UVB, but how many others have been released into the wild of the UK, where they have perished.
If similar scenarios have taken place with Axolotl and other amphibians around the world, and I have no doubt that they have, this probably would transfer any fungal problems to the wild habitat of those areas.
While scientists try to tackle this problem, it is for CITES and governments around the whole world to put an end to the import and export of animals destined for the pet trade and to impose very stiff penalties on the traders responsible for smuggling any such animal.