Amphibian experts gathered today at the Zoological Society of London to hear about the sorry state of the world’s frogs, toads, newts, salamanders and caecilians.

“I can hardly think of a more important subject for us to be covering today,” ZSL’s director general Lesley Dickie Ralph Armond* told the gathered scientists. “Human intervention is essential for the survival of a vast range of amphibian species.”

While much has been made of the nasty infectious disease chytridiomycosis, Angus Carpenter of the University of East Anglia told the symposium of another problem: the global amphibian trade.

Data on species imported into countries and declared under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species between 1985 and 2008 show that over 100 million frogs were traded for meat, making over 26,000,000 kg of meat in total.

In the same timeframe 617,000 individual frogs were traded, mostly for the pet trade.

“[In] the meat trade, high levels of it were very old, pre-92, whereas for the pet trade 60% of it is more recent,” says Carpenter. “It’s a young trade and it’s a growing trade.”

Worryingly, this is only data from species listed under CITES. Andrew Cunningham, of the ZSL’s Institute of Zoology, told the conference, “Non-CITES listed amphibians are a huge trade.”

Coming back to chytridiomycosis, there’s more bad news from Cunningham: “Chytridiomycosis is being spread globally through the trade.”

Nature documentary god David Attenborough reminded the symposium that while “12% of birds are thought to be threatened, 21% of mammals are thought to be threatened. But 30% of amphibians are threatened.”

He added, “They are unusually vulnerable and if we lose them we lose important elements within ecosystems, and more; we lose some of the most extraordinary creatures on Earth. This is the first time that a whole class of animals is in danger and in our hands.”

Image: a mantilla frog / photo by ‘cyanocorax’ via Flickr

* The original version of this post wrongly attributed these quotes to Lesley Dickie, executive director of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria and chair of the session at which these comments were made. Apologies for the error.