Frog leg feast has scientist shopping mad

THERE’S a town in eastern France called Vittel and every year around the beginning of May it holds a festival called the Foire aux Grenouilles.

There’s lots of entertainment and cultural stuff at the festival but it’s centred on a celebration of frogs — or, more precisely, on eating frogs’ legs.

A group of US based international wildlife conservation organisations has recently issued a report that attacks this French festival. The report is called Canapes to Extinction — The International Trade in Frog’s Legs and its Ecological Impact. It’s the first comprehensive study of its kind and it has come up with some strange facts.

It claims there is a large scale industry systematically devastating frog populations throughout the world and, subsequently, causing severe environmental impacts to natural ecosystems.

The United States imports an average of 2,280 tons of frog’s legs every year, and it takes up to a billion frogs to provide them. In addition, 2,216 tons of live frogs are imported for the Asian-American market.

The EU has an even greater appetite for them and imports 4,600 tons of legs a year. Belgium, France and the Netherlands are the top European importers.

Wild frogs are protected throughout the EU, including Ireland, which is why they have to be imported. Indonesia is the top supplier, accounting for 84% of European imports, and most of its frogs are caught in the wild. Frogs are also farmed intensively in China, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Until the mid 1980s India and Bangladesh dominated the world trade in frogs. But as their wild frog populations declined they began to be plagued by the insects that the frogs used to control and insecticide usage soared. Both countries banned frog hunting and now things are returning to normal.

The global trade in frogs also has some indirect effects on frog populations. Some live frogs inevitably escape and can become invasive species, causing ecological devastation in their new home.

The trade has also helped to spread a disease caused by a Chytrid fungus that is killing amphibians on a worldwide scale.

In fact, frogs, and other amphibians such as toads, newts and salamanders, are the most endangered animals on earth. About 32% of known species are estimated to be under threat and 120 species have become extinct since 1980.

Yet they don’t seem to be a popular focus for conservation and, on an international scale, there is little in the way of legal protection for them.

Ireland has three species of wild amphibian — the common frog, the common newt and the natterjack toad.

Natterjack toads only exist in a few isolated populations on the coast of west Kerry and one small introduced population in Wexford. They live in sand dunes containing fresh-water ponds and so they are vulnerable to habitat loss and climate change.

Newts are one of the least studied of Irish wild animals and there is no reliable data about their status in this country. They are seldom seen and I was quite startled the other day when I came across one while I was weeding the garden. I had no idea I shared the garden with them.

Frogs are our commonest amphibian. Recent research has shown that they are a native animal, although some Irish frogs are descended from stock introduced by humans. It seems likely that Irish frog populations declined considerably in the 20th century because of extensive land drainage which reduced their breeding habitat.

Silage cutting may also have been a factor. There is some data indicating that the decline has now stopped. The Irish Peatland Conservation Council’s (ipcc.ie/hoptoitintro.html) does surveys and keeps a database on frog populations. Their website, although a bit child-orientated, has plenty useful information.

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