I hope people would recognize that there are other reasons to regret purchasing WC animals other than the possibility of getting a bad deal...
I hope the poor things recover from their ordeal. They are tough little beasts, so hopefully they'll make it...
I usually don't buy WC animals
most of the newts and salamanders I've had before (tiger salamanders and firebelly newts)....[]....some firebellys that were in bad shape and very skinny
Yeah, that's not consistent...
Yes, a biologist and a University professor both told me that field collection is obtain blamed unfairly, but if the habitat is in good shape it is not easy to overcollect. The reason is you rarely find an entire population at once even if it seems like a lot of animals to us. Certainly, slow maturing and long lived species are more at risk, but even with bounties on timber rattlesnakes here in the NE USA, they were only wiped out from a few areas. Since then fragmentation, roads, habitat destruction, and now disease has done a much better job of extirpating them
Like i said, this is a gross generalization. It holds true for certain species, certain populations and certain collection modalities (not all forms of collection are remotely the same). It doesn't hold true for every one of them. In the case of these salamanders you have no idea what their population status is in the collection sites, how often and in what numbers they are collected (hint, these are imported in significant numbers and it's not a one off). To assume that everything is fine because some other species is capable of enduring sustainable exploitation does not follow at all.
Also, in order to sustainibly exploit a population it needs to be considered what kind of impact could be had on that population through which kinds of collection (this is why we have ecological studies). The WC market is not bothered by such things...it takes as many animals as possible, from any population, it doesn't care what impact it has. This is not a mindful collection from people taking steps to make sure they are doing things right...this is blind exploitation. Even if you can't collect an entire, or most of a population at once, or in subsequent collections, that does not mean you are not having an impact on it. At the very least, by collecting adults in significant numbers, you are affecting genetic diversity and in this day and age when pathogens are a real, serious, rapidly spreading threat, an impoverished gene-pool can mean further susceptability to those pathogens.
Another important point you mention is the state of the habitat. This is europe we are talking about...we don't have large expansions of untouched wilderness and pristine habitat...for the most part, adequate habitats here are fragile and highly isolated. This is a problem that keeps getting worse because europe is a very highly exploited continent, with a very long history of exploitation. European amphibians are protected for a reason...
Since you don't know where these animals are being taken from, in what numbers, how frequently, what the status of those populations and habitat is and what they are being exposed to during the importation process or how they are being treated, i think your characterisation of this whole thing as "nah, i'm sure it's fine" is extremely suspect.
By the way, if i seem angry i'm afraid it's because i am, this kind of thing pisses me off...even more so because CB fire salamanders exist and are available and because this is a much bigger problem than just you, individually.