Ecuador firm sells frogs to save them from poachers
POACHERS in Ecuador have long known the hefty prices their country’s rare frogs can fetch.
But now environmentally conscious firms are starting to sell the amphibians too – to try to save them from the black market and threatened extinction.
In San Rafael, just outside the capital Quito, scientific company Wikiri is raising 12 species of frogs.
Some are native only to Ecuador, while others are at risk of disappearing from their natural habitat elsewhere.
After being raised in hundreds of terrariums, they are sent to Canada, the US, Japan and various European countries for up to $600 (R7 700) each.
That high value “gives you an idea just how profitable that activity [frog poaching] can be”, Lola Guarderas, manager of the facility, said.
On the company’s grounds, made up of big gardens alongside a river, the frogs are reproduced in labs, so as not to affect local fauna, and then put into an “ethical bio-trade” circuit.
“It’s totally different from the illegal trade in species, of those who go directly into areas to catch all the frogs they can to then export them, to the detriment of the animals in the forest,” Guarderas said.
As well as running the frog farm, she is coordinator of the Jambatu Centre, which researches and preserves amphibians, and is hosted by Wikiri.
Ecuador is home to more than 600 species of frogs, of which nearly half can be found only in the country.
Ecuador’s environment ministry says 186 of the species are at risk of becoming extinct.
The research facility works on about 40 species typically found in Ecuador or other South American countries.
A dozen are offered for export, including the Agalychnis spurrelli, or gliding tree frog.