Misters the French, stop the first. The consumption of frogs' legs in France and elsewhere made carry a heavy threat to the populations of batrachian. In an article published in Conservation Biology, four researchers assessed the largeness of international trade on the populations of frogs. Croak becomes more and more rare …

According to the UNO, city by New Scientist, France would import between 2500 and 4000 tons of thighs of frogs every year. In total, according to David Bickford (University of Singapore) and its colleagues, between 180 millions and a thousand million frogs would be taken in nature every year. The indonésie is one of the first suppliers of the amateurs of batrachian muscles: not less than five thousand tons would be exported towards France, Belgium and Luxembourg. But in the absence of official statistics, it is very difficult to say if this appetite really threatens the batrachian.

Last year, Bickford and seven colleagues had already published a long study on the disappearance of the frogs in the scientific magazine in free access PLOSONE. They tried to assess reasons of the decline of their population a bit everywhere in the world, having reviewed a small half of 2583 listed kinds. A not very optimistic balance sheet according to problems raised on the ground: decline of population going up to redemption, sensitivity augmented in diseases, morphological deformities, etc. 32 % kinds one hundred and sixty are in process of redemption and would have disappeared in some decades. Threats all the more important as kinds occupy a narrow territory: they are then much more sensitive to a local modification of their habitat. The risk of threat to a kind also augments when its biotope thinks near zones it is densément populated by the human beings. The impairments of climate would also be a factor of disappearance of amphibians. A lot of still unknown kinds risk disappearing before having been noticed (1).

Study published by Conservation Biology comes just in time to include better the impact of the man on these amazing animals. Not happy to degrade their habitat, its immoderate taste for frogs' legs would add to threat. The preparation of the meat, which is partitioned and frozen, returns almost impossible the identification of the kind of origin, except to drive genetic analyses on the imported lots. Even the leaders do not always know the origin of what they serve to their guests. In when a tracabilité on the meat of frog?

(1) Bickford and colleagues announced last year the discovery of a frog without lungs in Bornéo.

Picture: © David Bickford - University of Singapore