Price for ss gigliolii

nate said:

Wow, seriously? I find that stunning. I don't have access to the literature really anymore, now that I'm no longer at a university, but just a simple google search should be more than enough to convince you. I'll get to a brief list in a sec...but your point about caudates is slightly misleading in that they're still relatively new and obscure to the other herps in terms of the pet trade. But they're making headway. N. kaiseri is the biggest example at this point. I see several Asian species soon to foolow as well.

Mozafar Sharifi, Theodore Papenfuss, Nasrullah Rastegar-Pouyani, Steven Anderson, Sergius Kuzmin 2008. Neurergus kaiseri. In: IUCN 2009. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2009.1. <www.iucnredlist.org>.


But for other stuff, it's difficult to even know where to begin, it's so extensive, and I just don't have the time these days to really track down stuff for you, but here's a quick sample of herps:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/b...llegal-pet-trade-devastating-popul-2009-05-19

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/madagascar-turtles-tortoises-47020708

http://news.bio-medicine.org/biolog...-turtle-toward-extinction--new-report-8306-1/

http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i46/46a01201.htm

And this totally overlooks commercial collection for food and other products, it's just pet trade.

And to be clear, I'm not necessarily against commercial collecting. There are plenty of species that can handle sustained, regulated harvest each year for the pet trade. What I'm against is largely hobbyist/breeder motivated inflation of prices for rarer animals already threatened by extinction. If the animals don't already have it bad enough with habitat loss or perhaps they had a tiny distribution to begin with, putting such high prices on them makes them a glaring target. To me, a person knowing about the plight of a rare herp, but still offering their captive bred at prices that encourage continued poaching, is indefensible and inexcusable.

Additionally, the number of people keeping herps as traditional pets as well as the international market for herp collecting has exploded in the last 20-30 years. It's only recently become so large. We're on the cusp now. We will see start seeing a wave commercial collecting driven herp extirpations in the very near future, much like what we've already seen in fish, mammals, and birds.

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I guess I should be more specific....I can't think of any U.S. species that have reached near-extinction do to collection for the pet trade in recent years. I also agree that species that reproduce slowly like turtles are at risk. I'm not trying to take a shot at your statement...I am genuinely interested to see what the literature has to say because this topic comes up so often in personal conversations and on forums but much of people's opinions are sensationalized and unfounded.

As for my prices on gigliolii, they aren't rare in their range, they're protected, and I don't feel like my offering of captive bred will encourage illegal commercial collecting of gigliolii in Italy. Kaiseri may be another story. I still have not seen any real survey of their range and numbers though. Have you seen anything concrete?

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nate said:

though I doubt it will ever cause extinction due to the habitat being in a country with capable protection for them. But small scale collecting/selling will certainly contine to take place while the animals have such a high value. Suffice to say, anytime a rare species gets a high price tag, it's a step backward in conserving the animal in the wild.

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Capable protection? Right... I've witnessed individuals selling adult gigliolli out of the back of a car at Gersfeld while there were lectures going on in the town hall. That was the same meeting, I think, where guys who came to give a talk on Salamandrina terdigitata were selling those after the show too.

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