Tarantula importation, endangered species, etc

[Trace]

I am doing a presentation at the upcoming Invertebrates in Education, Conservation, and Captivity conference on the benefits of captive rearing tarantulas in mass. Can anyone help me out with finding a few statistics and pictures? I want to start the presentation with amounts of tarantulas that are being imported from around the world. I would also like to report on any endangered or threatened tarantulas. Does anyone have any real data on how many tarantulas are coming into the US or to the world for the pet trade? Any pictures of large shipments of tarantulas going to wholesalers? Anything at this point would help. Thank you!

 

[jayefbe]

Are there any benefits to keeping captive tarantulas? We definitely put a strain on wild populations, endangered ones at that. There's loads of illegal smuggling, and there's almost certainly never going to be any reintroductions of tarantulas back into the wild. I'm just curious as to what your argument is. Certainly theres a huge benefit in captive breeding over relying on WC specimens for our collections, but the hobby at large still doesn't "help" wild populations. (outside of the few BTS-funded conservation projects that I've heard of).

 

[Trace]

The presentation has nothing to do with reintroductions of tarantulas but instead rearing them in mass to help stave off the wild importation of tarantulas. Think of the number of adult female Grammostola that are being imported every year. I was really hoping for jaw-dropping numbers of how many rose haired tarantulas, for example, are harvested every year. I'm presenting on a husbandry technique that eliminates individualized care for s'lings and I'm hoping to show how this new system could undercut the wild caught supply and drive down the market. I'm at the point in my presentation that I wanted to put down some cold-hard statistics.

 

[jayefbe]

I see what you're getting at now, and I definitely agree with you. I would love to see G. rosea no longer imported at ridiculous numbers. However, unless you have a reliable method for breeding them, have a time machine so we don't have to wait a decade for CB slings to become adults, and can do it all for under a few bucks per adult female, G. rosea are going to continue to be imported in huge numbers until the law makes it impossible to do so.

As far as figures, I'm sure they exist somewhere. There used to be users on this forum that worked in the exotic pets import business, but I haven't seen them post in a long time. The actual numbers are truly staggering, but the last ones I saw were a few years ago and I don't recall exactly. I wish you the best of luck.

 

[poisoned]

I see what you're getting at now, and I definitely agree with you. I would love to see G. rosea no longer imported at ridiculous numbers. However, unless you have a reliable method for breeding them, have a time machine so we don't have to wait a decade for CB slings to become adults, and can do it all for under a few bucks per adult female, G. rosea are going to continue to be imported in huge numbers until the law makes it impossible to do so.

It's interesting, that CB G. rosea slings are available in Europe for a few euros.

 

[jayefbe]

It's interesting, that CB G. rosea slings are available in Europe for a few euros.

It's the same thing here in the US. It's hard to price them higher when you can get full grown adults for the same price, especially considering the growth rate of this species. I've gotten all my G. rosea slings as freebies. They're a difficult species to breed, without the payday that comes with other difficult breeding species like Xenesthis or M. balfouri.

 

[Mossae]

You might have to do allot of legwork and ask all the importers you can find

 

[TownesVanZandt]

You might have to do allot of legwork and ask all the importers you can find

You know, something tells me that conference ended years ago...

 

[matypants]

 

[TomM]

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