Amphibians in Czech zoological gardens — trends and implications for conservation

Abstract

The alarming pace of loss of global biodiversity gets major attention worldwide, and amphibians are by far the most endangered group of vertebrates. IUCN estimates that 41% of amphibian species are threatened. The year 2008 was named as “The Year of the Frog” to raise both awareness and funding of mainly ex situ programs needed to mitigate the amphibian extinction crisis. Zoos and aquariums are expected to participate in ex situ conservation breeding programs of endangered species. Number of publications documents the increasing concern in amphibian captive breeding programs. In this paper, we reviewed the current effort of public zoological gardens in Czech Republic on amphibian keeping and breeding. Our results show that species collections reflect combination of the availability of species in the pet trade and the availability of surplus animals from other zoos, but not the needs of amphibian conservation.