Selling $600 frogs to save them from poachers

– Illegal trafficking is ‘big’ –

In total, the research facility works on around 40 species typically found in Ecuador or otherwise native to several other South American countries.

A dozen are offered for export, including the Agalychnis spurrelli, or gliding tree frog; the Cruziohyla calcarifer, or splendid leaf frog, with its striped yellow belly and long legs; and the Hyalinobatrachium aureoguttatum, which has a translucent body dotted with yellow spots.

Around 500 frogs per year are sold, adding to an annual flow from other Latin American countries that amounts to as many as 7,000, sent everywhere in the world.

The hope is to undermine the black market trafficking of the animals.

“Illicit trafficking in amphibians in the world is a very big activity,” biologist Luis Coloma, director of the Jambatu Center, told AFP.

That activity adds to other dangers faced by the frogs, some species of which risk sudden extinction as their habitat is wiped out by encroachment, pollution or climate change.

According to Ecuador’s environment ministry, 18 frog species have already apparently disappeared, robbing the country of some of its rich biodiversity.