Sergé,
I am happy we have a similar basis of understanding. We already had a personal discussion on this topic. There are severe regulations and laws coming towards all of us and our hobby making it more and more difficult following them AND pursuing our hobby. Finally, to me there is no difference in illegal (=non-authorized) exportation between private and commercial groups. Disrespecting laws is disrespecting laws. And by this one disrespects the sovereignity of a country and its peoples right to establish their own laws. What would anybody from us think, feel, and do if there was a foreigner coming into our forests and collects animals or plants to take them out without permission? It is just the same the other way around.
Of course it would be better to start a breeding stock from a smaller number of specimen rather than to collect a huge number. But the kaiseri are here now and should be offered best possible conditions meaning to get into the right hands. I am not sure if my hands will be the right for them but will do any efforts to have them established and reproducing. We will see. For this I have reduced my number off maintained species significantly to have an optimum in room and time for them. This includes a separate room (chamber) with AC and periodical steering of parameters which should be finished before summer within my new setup.
More I would have liked the previous offspring of kaiseri (my information is there have been some hundreds over the past ten years) to be treated more carefully as they are gone completely more or less. But this is in the responsibility of the breeders and the people who get them.
I dont know where the actual offspring has been given to but I couldn´t get any. The more I was happy to get them from this import. BTW there are two independently acting wholesalers offering the kaiseri. And as one of them offers "cb" already I am positively sure that they will have bred from the numerous specimen they received. And will put the offspring into the market successively. This will affect the irrational prices, make it less attractive to import this species and offer more people the opportunity to try this delicate newt. From this point, the role of these exporters aren´t so bad. They seem to have much more success from their strategy (taking a large number of specimen to establish breeding groups - which is natural for many species) compared to the strategy of taking only some.
I have personal comments from scientists who have collected kaiseri in large numbers, about 50 within half an hour (and could have taken much more within the same time) from just one spot. And there are much more spots known now than there were some years ago.
More, the climatic conditions mentioned for their distribution area in the Zagros are not completely attributable. From climate servers for science there are data which give evidence about possible annual seasoning different from what I have read until now.
I am in contact with scientists from Iran and hope to have more precise data from actual ecological studies in the Zagros soon.
Steffen