P,waltl in Europe

Since this is a relatively easy species to breed and raise the larvae to adulthood, it leads me to wonder: what is the situation with P.waltl in Europe these days?

Are most of those sold in the pet trade wild caught or captive bred?

In Japan, where I live, I don't think P.waltl is imported much anymore. There are enough CB P.waltl around to meet the demand for this species. In fact, they're kind of hard to get rid of once you end up with too many larvae...

I can't think of many other species in which CB are available enough to dry up the demand for WC, other than say axolotls.

Too bad the same thing can't be said for the native species here.

Generally is the axieslike situation or similar. Most of them is FX captive bred generation.

Hi,
I think Jurai is right. Isn't it illegal to take Pleurodeles from the wild in Spain or Portugal? If you by them here in germany they often are marked as Pleurodeles poireti, because you need papers for European species but not for African species,but I think they are always cb.
Fabian

Hi Tim,

True and actually very strange: lots of species are fairly easy to breed in high numbers (e.g. most Cynops, Triturus), others can also be bred with a bit of experience (Neurergus, Paramesotriton, Tylototriton). Unfortunately, I am afraid that this is a classic market principle: when a species becomes very easily available because of lots of offspring being produced, it apparently looses a lot of its attraction. We have seen it here in Europe with several species that were once quite common and bred in large numbers, but have now become very rare. I am afraid that, as in other branches of the terraristic hobby, the search for "something really rare and exclusive" becomes the main purpose of lots of people, resulting in "stamp-collection" like animal collection. One of my biggest fears is that most of the animals are sold to animal consumers. For example: large numbers of Ambystoma maculatum are still imported in Europe. Breeding appears to be very easy as proven by a Belgian breeder who repeatedly bred this species in an outdoor enclosure. What with all these thousands of (wildcaught) animals that are supposed to build the basis of breeding groups? I think that a lot of people in this hobby should try to focus more on a limited number of species instead of always trying to have something new and "more exclusive" than the others...

I wish to add something to Franks comment, which I do partly share, but I guess there's even a bit more to this. When you keep such a species and each year you have offpsring that nobody wants, there 's a downward spinal to breeding as well. Why breed them further if nobody wants them and you're stuck with a few 100 animals ?? Anyway it won't stop me from breeding since I got some room (but now all have this), but if I have to choose which species to breed I will not continue breeding the same species in large numbers each year again...and make a logical choice. So this in itself makes that there is less breeding occuring. Less demand, less breeding , some annual losses arriving... add all of that up and if as an extra feature the species is not that stable : they are gone in the hobby. That's also why we have set up the studbook process and in Holland the KN lists so that we have an idea which species do well.

Since the last annual meeting I have posted myself up for maintaining the KN list for Holland and Belgium and have setup a relational database with a report painter on top for maintaining the data. I have also setup a similar system for studbook maintenance.

Concerning mole salamanders : A. maculatum, A. tigrinum, A. opacum & even tigers are bred (or have been ) in Europe but when offspring is available there is not always that much interest. Some people only want adults ...

Nevertheless I would also want ot mention that there are also people doing a real good job breeding and rearing as well and we shouldn't just stress the negative facts. Some species are really well covered and it is partly due to captive care observations that some traits/facts have been seen for the first and been able to get studied. Just to give some examples : how can you observe evolution of individual juvenile color patterns to adults, the age before reproduction, easy study of some nuptial dance studies ...).

Anyway Tim regarding your initial question (before this gets to be a book) : in the KN list I find 12 people keeping waltl; 8 of them have breeding groups and from time to time breed them, 3 have regular breedings occuring. I think this species is quite safe since it is easy to maintain, breed and long living. But currently there's not a large interest in them . Somebody offering waltl in Holland even wanted to offer his offspring for free.. nobody was actually interested. If thsi would have been the colorful Neurergus ..

Also it is my opinion that somebody really interested in doing a study can do interesting studies with any species: annual growths patterns under various circumstances (temperature a food), different setups with juveniles to study what works best. Defining parameters and setting the data out in a graph... Just maintaining the age of the animals in order to have longevity records ... I know people just keeping one species and doing a great job , I know other peopel holding several species and doing a great job in breeding...

Anyway before anybody asks : I do not intend to offer names of people keeping any species since this is confidential data which I wish to respect. I just wanted to state that there is some view on things and if things go bad we can try to steer (or is it stear ?) this in the right direction (best done through or with the help of the studbookkeeper). At least that's what I would like to realise with this