Human Appetites Driving Frogs to Extinction
An international team of scientists have added human
consumption to the long list of things already
threatening global frog populations, the BBC
reported in January. A new study, published in
the journal Conservation Biology, found that
upwards of one billion frogs may be captured
from the wild for this purpose every year, with
France and the United States being the two
largest importers. Commonly thought of as only a
French delicacy, frogs’ legs are actually more
broadly consumed, appearing in some European
school cafeterias and being popular in Asia.
Researchers have found that the trade has
increased over the past 20 years. Corey Bradshaw, a senior
scientist with the South Australian Research
and Development Institute and one of the
study’s authors, named Indonesia the biggest
exporter of frogs. Unfortunately, data
necessary for the conservation of frogs in
Indonesia is lacking. It is almost impossible
to know which species are being traded and
whether they are endangered. Frogs and other amphibians are at additional
risk
of extinction from climate change,
habitat loss, pollution, and a highly
infectious and uncontrollable disease called
chytridiomycosis, which has been known to wipe
out
entire populations.
