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Endangered Species

by Silviu Petrovan, Pictures by Silviu Petrovan and Viorel Popescu
June/July 2005

A look at the menus of some of Bucharest’s restaurants or a walk through some of its supermarkets are likely to indicate one food item whose presence is worrying ecologists and conservationists on a global scale. That item is frog’s legs, which represents as much of a problem in Romania as it does in similar countries that have failed to take decisive action to end, or at least control, this trade.

Amphibians have become an increasingly common topic for discussion of late. Interestingly, one of the first actions by George Bush after becoming president was to instruct government agencies to conduct research into the causes of the decline in their numbers, and to develop a plan to monitor trends of amphibian populations. Why would George Bush ever make such a request? The simple answer is that the situation is so serious that something had to be done.

One may question the connection between frogs in the US and those that inhabit Romanian lakes and forests. The fact is that the scientific community has made regular alerts that amphibian populations are declining or disappearing worldwide. Nobody knows exactly why; there may be many separate reasons ranging from the alteration and loss of habitats, water pollution of breeding sites, acid rains, increasing road traffic and the ultraviolet emissions that harm both amphibian spawn and adults. Indeed, one of the first indications that the ozone layer was becoming depleted was through observing the delicate skins of frogs over time – it was thus that scientists deduced that humans would be exposed to the same dangerous ultraviolet rays as have these humble creatures, who so often find their fate at the end of a vivisectionists scalpel in a laboratory.

Due to their permeable skin and the biphasic life cycle, both terrestrial and aquatic amphibians have a unique relation with the environment. So integrated and receptive are they that amphibians are accurate indicators of the quality of their habitats. Tadpoles, for example, are extremely sensitive to the presence of hormones in water - so sensitive that they serve as tests for the majority of hormonal compounds. This same sensitivity makes them vulnerable to chemical pollution, and in recent years breeding grounds from locations as diverse as Cismigiu Park to the Mississippi River have shown up abnormalities and malformations in frogs.

Amphibians are cold blooded, which means that they don’t use metabolically generated heat to maintain their body temperatures. This enables them to allocate a higher proportion of their ingested energy to producing new biomass, which can result in dense populations. Amphibians therefore play a key role in the food chain as both predator and prey. Even in a temperate country like Romania, which lacks the huge biodiversity typically associated with rainforest habitats, there are still 80-odd species which prey on frogs. For many of these species – particularly birds – frogs represent an essential part of their diet.

Sadly though, the creep of suburbia and the detritus of our waste is not the sum of the human threat. In Romania, the export of frog’s legs began in the 1960s, when the communist regime decided that all animals should pay their share to the welfare and progress of society. Animal scientists were forced to concentrate their research on topics that emphasised the economic value of species, which often resulted in strange, sometimes hilarious declarations on the importance of a rare Romanian lizard for agriculture, for example. Unfortunately the authorities failed to understand the importance and value of frogs as natural insecticides in agriculture, and allowed frogs to be caught by fishermen. The frogs who were most populous around the Danube region, became popular to catch either for their legs alone or to be sent alive for lab experiments in schools.

In Romania between 1950 and 1956 a quota of 200,000 kilograms a year was set as a quota – a huge number which the government abolished after it became clear that frog populations were decreasing rapidly as a result. Since the 1960s a total ban has been enforced, but this is barely policed at all. Licences to harvest frogs are hypothetically available, but the law is framed in such a way that applicants must first prove the density of the amphibian population – a near impossible task, so people who want to poach simply go ahead and do so, knowing that there is a next to zero chance that they will be caught.

Statistics on the international trade and consumption of frog’s legs are scant and scattered but those that are available present some idea of the size of the commerce. In Italy, for example, the huge number of 47 million frogs were captured and eaten between 1968 and 1970. In Switzerland, 146,266 kilograms of frogs legs, equal to about 1.8 million frogs, were imported in 1980.

Some nations came to realise the impact of this commerce on the environment, when many species were already in a precarious position, in 1979 the Bern Convention offered formal protection to all European amphibian species - even if each signatory country decides the status of its own species. Germany, for instance, legally protects all native amphibian and reptile species, and Denmark invests millions of euros every year to try to recreate some of the wetland habitats that were previously destroyed, leading to the extinction of several species. Even countries which are not generally regarded as environmentally aware such as India and Iran prohibit the export of frogs for human consumption. Initiatives of this type are yet to be established in Romania. Brown frogs, which are the most vulnerable since they are not aquatic and gather in large numbers only in spring - the time when they move from the surrounding forested areas to reproduce – are regarded as completely unimportant by the authorities.

Societas Herpetologica Romanie or SHR the NGO I work for recently received financing from the Rufford Foundation, a UK-based organisation, to conduct a survey on amphibian species in the Semenic-Caras Gorges national park aimed at helping the newly established park administration with information concerning the presence and distribution of these animals inside the area as well as threats to their existence. To our great disappointment we discovered that both species of brown frogs are being massively poached (see pictures) during the months of March and April, and most of them have the legs cut off while alive and carrying their eggs. The four rangers who cover the 66,000-hectare national park mainly try to stop poachers of larger animals and people stealing wood, and do not have the wherewithal or the interest in looking out for amphibians.

Possible solutions include discouraging local populations to eat these species by promoting their ecological importance, and to work with the park administration rangers in order to try to end the massacre. Since no largescale frog farms exist, all frogs which are being collected for human consumption come from the wild and even if aquatic frogs, also named green frogs, can be harvested after laying their eggs it still should make us think whether it is moral to kill for a few grams of meat of an animal which has such important value for the ecosystem in which it lives, and even more now that amphibians are on a global decline. Our lust for such delicacies relies on the countries where amphibian protection doesn’t take place because of poverty or lack of interest.

For more information,
write to Silviu Petrovan at shr_herp@yahoo.com