Collecting amphibians

[Fae]

Lol...

[kueluck]

Guys, pay no attention to the butt head in the corner and just ignore “it” and the posts “it” put on the form. “It” feels the need for attention.

[kueluck]

Ok, back to the topic at hand. Can someone please explain the whole pathogens things with natives to me?

I guess I just don’t understand how captive, native amphibians can have pathogens that are bad, yet still be healthy and should not be release back from where they came from. Example: I have 14 toad tadpoles in hopes of having a few females to keep, then letting the others go (not for breeding purpose). I also have Cope’s Grays raised from tads last year, and 2 Fowler’s toads, raised from toadlets last year. So releasing any of these would be bad for the population?

[UncleChester]

I guess I just don’t understand how captive, native amphibians can have pathogens that are bad, yet still be healthy and should not be release back from where they came from. Example: I have 14 toad tadpoles in hopes of having a few females to keep, then letting the others go (not for breeding purpose). I also have Cope’s Grays raised from tads last year, and 2 Fowler’s toads, raised from toadlets last year. So releasing any of these would be bad for the population?

Consider a pacific chorus frog. You could collect from a disease free and healthy population. It gets exposed to chytrid from your Xenopus despite taking precautions. The chorus frog is visibly fine and can handle this. You release later back where you found it. Blammo.

This is how I understand it anyways. I don't know how many diseases out that can be spread around like this. Since I don't know, it's not something I would personally take a risk on.

[UncleChester]

There's nothing bad by default to eat frogs, they're animals and edible like many other animals. However, it's a matter of perspective and how one does it, not to mention global commerce/private consumption. For example, a private person hunting and eating some American bullfrogs are actually helping the decline of some amphibians, since they're a very invasive species in many part of US, where they eat both the food of other frogs, and other frogs. However, let's leave that specific topic to this thread, which actually deals with the eating or non-eating of frogs.

The same logic applies to collecting amphibians. Naturalists shouldn't argue if you take adults from an invasive species out of the wild breeding population.

This doesn't just apply to invasive species though. Sustainable collection form healthy and abundant native populations is certainly possible.

[ViperJr]

The same logic applies to collecting amphibians. Naturalists shouldn't argue if you take adults from an invasive species out of the wild breeding population.

This doesn't just apply to invasive species though. Sustainable collection form healthy and abundant native populations is certainly possible.

Never said that it doesn't apply to collecting, did I?

However, I personally feel that it's unnecessary to collect from the wild when there's a CB population available. Not to mention that it's illegal in some countries not only to collect, but to even keep WC animals, no matter how abundant they are (like it is in Sweden).

[UncleChester]

Never said that it doesn't apply to collecting, did I?

Nope- just agreeing with you and explicitly expanding

However, I personally feel that it's unnecessary to collect from the wild when there's a CB population available. Not to mention that it's illegal in some countries not only to collect, but to even keep WC animals, no matter how abundant they are (like it is in Sweden).

Oh yea, definitely follow the laws. I'd agree about CB if they're available. If there are abundant local wild populations I would want some convincing proof that someone selling CB specimens is actually selling CB specimens.

So, what happens to a kid who brings home a wild caught frog in Sweden? This would be illegal? Is it something that happens there? I'm genuinely curious if there's a different cultural attitude towards molesting amphibians in Sweden. Capturing frogs in buckets seems to be commonly accepted as something kids do here. The legality of it depends on the frog and province.

[Kristen]

Not to mention that it's illegal in some countries not only to collect, but to even keep WC animals, no matter how abundant they are (like it is in Sweden).

It's like that here too (but they have different laws for different states of Australia)

[ViperJr]

Nope- just agreeing with you and explicitly expanding

Oh, sorry. I read it as you were disagreeing with me, my mistake.

Oh yea, definitely follow the laws. I'd agree about CB if they're available. If there are abundant local wild populations I would want some convincing proof that someone selling CB specimens is actually selling CB specimens.

Yes, that's a problem in the hobby (in countries where it's acceptable to keep and capture wild specimens). When there's WC readily available, people don't "need" to start breeding them on their own (since it's worse financially).

So, what happens to a kid who brings home a wild caught frog in Sweden? This would be illegal? Is it something that happens there? I'm genuinely curious if there's a different cultural attitude towards molesting amphibians in Sweden. Capturing frogs in buckets seems to be commonly accepted as something kids do here. The legality of it depends on the frog and province.

Since we don't have frog cops running around checking every kids room if there's some frogs there, it's hard to actually do something about, but yes, it is illegal and they're all protected by law (and this applies to every lizard (3 species), snakes (3 species), frog/toad (11 species) and salamander (2 species) we have here). With some of the of non-threatend species as Rana temporaria, you're allowed to collect tadpoles and raise them, as long as you release them as soon as they're getting legs (and they should be returned to the same location as you collected them), which I personally do at summer when we're at our cabin (with an outdoor "enclosure", with interior only collected from the lake I took them, and hundreds of kilometers away from my own exotic, possible pathogen-carrying frogs ).

About the cultural difference, this is something that I actually found quite absurd when I first encountered the American frog-hobby. As far as I'm understanding, it's not that uncommon to collect frogs as pets, even for experience, longtime herpers. This is something that's very uncommon here (at least for herpers, I'm sure some kids collect frogs and keep them), and not generally accepted. And since you can't keep WC, the few herp expos we have here have all banned WC animals (ie. you are not allowed to sell WC at all, and you therefore need papers to prove that the animals are CB).

One of the reasons even the non-threatend species like R. temporaria is protected is because of the frogs that are living on the edge of extinction. In order to eliminate the chance of someone collecting (or killing) a Bufo viridis(for example) under the impression that it's a common frog, they just protected them all instead.

[REDDEV1L]

Apparently my last post was enough to be branded a -1 reputation and called an idiot.

Well, if i'm an idiot for trying to ensure there's as little as possible cross-contamination between my tanks individually and frogs i'm going to release then SPANK MY @SS AND CALL ME AN IDIOT

[S13]

Apparently my last post was enough to be branded a -1 reputation and called an idiot.

Well, if i'm an idiot for trying to ensure there's as little as possible cross-contamination between my tanks individually and frogs i'm going to release then SPANK MY @SS AND CALL ME AN IDIOT

I would imagine who ever did this misclicked and was trying to negative rep the FROGHUNTER tard that came in here trolling. That's about the only logical explanation that I can come up with.