It's about time. I was wondering if anyone would notice...Did you mean 'served'?
"I have seen the official photos of these seized tarantulas and have spoken with the people who have the seized tarantulas and have helped with their identification." Bertani
I think the authorities and Bertani are in the process of counting them one by one and cataloguing each species so we'll probably get to know the final numbers in a few weeks. Discrepancies in quantities............the only discrepancy i've noticed is the one Lee told Mark. Lee said the numbers had been much less than 1000. However, Dr. Bertani's figure of 900 + all the
Couldn't have said it better. Completely agree with you on this.
Stop clicking on the thread
Well said!! I agree.
I believe it is illegal to keep tarantulas in brazil.....vicious circle, isn't it?
Vicious indeed. There's a demand that can't be met by legal standards, so people do it by illegal standards.
Well, of course take all those offspring and multiply by the proportion that would survive, and of course factor in the probability that the spider in question would have been killed by a wasp or something. And of course notice that now that the tarantula is gone there is more space and food for other tarantulas. Yes under optimal conditions a tarantula can have a lot of stinkin' offspring, but that doesn't mean taking a tarantula from the wild impacts the population by that factor. The impact on a population is roughly proportional to the fraction of the population that tarantula represents (somewhat less because less competition means more opportunity for the other tarantulas of that type in the area, somewhat more because now it's harder for tarantulas there to find mates).
It's true that most offspring don't survive, but the competition is fierce. There is no guarantee that the offspring of another tarantula will fill the void of one taken. Something else might well take that spot in the ecosystem. I also doubt the t's were collected from a number of colonies. They very likely collected every large T they could find in one area. Also, they are removing T's that beat the odds and survived as well as likely reducing the gene pool for those remaining. Removing that many t's also affects everything that feeds on those t's. As far as captive breeding, I think the price for slings would stay higher if all the massive imports of adult t's were stopped. I agree small numbers should be exported to breeders, but that's about it. These big importers are hurting captive breeding more than helping.
The problem in Brazil is that everything can survive pretty much everywhere. So if someone moves a specie of T from Manaus to Rio and it gets loose, it can probably survive and displace some other specie. So I kind of understand why they are banning the keeping of T's. Similar problems are creeping up in Florida. I do think Brazil needs to be less fanatical and allow some Brazilian to start a business breeding and exporting under strict guidelines. That would help conservation efforts in the long run.
You are exactly right. If they would control the exports in a safe way they would lower the price and eliminate a lot of the smuggling becuase there wouldn't be any money in it.
This is true, there was a lot of misinformation initially and it wasn't even clear who was involved just by rumour. However what most people are pissed off about is the suitcase and it's apparent conditions. There seems some truth in this part. It's been verified by a credible source and is reinforced by a lot of respected newspapers. Just look at the suitcase picture being exported all over the internet, is this a fake?
No, it's removing one tarantula. In a stable population of any animal, each animal leaves behind one replacement. If it left behind thousands, there'd be an incredible population explosion. As gvfarns suggests, even that one adult is subject to being removed by any number of predators or parasites or natural causes. Most of the "bounties of nature" get eaten. That's why I don't oppose the removal of one or two individuals from nature if they can be put to good use. But when commercial collecting takes place, not only does a population get severely reduced, but quite often commercial collectors destroy habitat in the process of "harvesting" animals.
I agree with you that taking a few isn't harmful, and I would even support small numbers of exports to breeders to keep bloodlines healthy. I also believe that if countries properly protected habitats, the risk to species from over collecting would be greatly reduced. I disagree with you though, that the removal of an adult female has zero, or negligible, impact on wild populations in areas where human impact is already being heavily felt (which is most of the world). As I stated earlier, there is no guarantee that another T will fill the void of one taken. Some other organism might fill that void. (Maybe a centipede, or a scorpion, or a mouse will fill the void where previously the T existed.) And if that happens, albeit theoretically, then the possible offspring from an adult female tarantula that has survived years of beating the odds and surviving, no longer have the possibility to exist. In my opinion, it would actually be better to remove an egg sac from the wild and sell the slings. That would have less impact on wild T populations than the removal of an adult female, because most slings aren't going to survive anyways and the female left in the wild could produce another sac in one year. I think the point you're making is what's the difference if a person catches a T or if a wasp kills a T. It's still one T. To me, the difference is that we are invaders to the ecosystem that has a very delicate balance. Wasps have been taking T's forever. We are fairly recent additions to the ecosystem in a lot of places, so when we remove a T, we are doing more damage because we are in addition to wasps, not in place of wasps.
I said this before, keeping Ts in Brazil is illegal.
You are mixing up two separate issues here. Taking of a single animal, and human impact on environments. If the environment is being destroyed, the tarantula population is being destroyed along with it, whether you collect specimens or not.
I think your concept of a void existing is mistaken. An environment doesn't have a specific number of "voids" to fill. An environment provides situations that individual plants and animals can utilize. The carrying capacity of a region for any species is not a fixed number but a fluid, changing one. If you were to mark off a square mile of jungle and be able to count the number of a particular species of tarantula living there, that number would continuously fluctuate. Sometimes conditions would allow the population to increase, sometimes the population would be forced to decrease. Members of that population would be being removed through many natural processes, and they'd be replaced as well. The difference between replacement rates and removal rates would dictate whether the population survived, vanished or grew. The removal of any one animal realistically is not going to alter the population significantly.