A few of our Australian Strophurus gecko's...

[deranged chipmunk]

I want to watch that on the big screen later. But I have seen a few documentaries about exotic animal smuggling. Very sad what those poor animals go though. But I have to give credit to the smugglers on their creativity. I wish they would put that creativity into preserving species versus smuggling. But I guess there's no money in that.


Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world ~ Nelson Mandela

[TKexotics]

Exactly, espacialy for the New-Zealand species like in the video, wich only produce 1-2 live young each year, and they can live up to 50 years, there always will be a demand so there always will be money to be made on them, so they will always smuggle them, even till the poor animals go extinct in their native habitat.

With Strophurus being much more productive there is a very well established captive population in Europe now and i geuss there is no need to smuggle them anymore.., well most of them anyway. You still see new species comming up every once in a while.
People will always want new and more rare species.

But with the New-Zealand gecko's the result of the smuggling is much more devastating, there are a bunch of healthy Strophurus populations in Australia, the populations of New-Zealand gecko's, and all their native reptiles for that mather are declining at a very alarming rate.

Very sad.

On the other hand, it's very hard to preserve them and try to establish captive born populations, When it's not possible to obtain them in any legal way.
Is it so smart to have a zero tolerance policy abouth keeping them in captivity, when they are on the verge of extinction???

Greetings.