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Development of the Chinese Giant Salamander Andrias Davidianus Farming Industry in Shaanxi Province, China: Conservation Threats and Opportunities

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Development of the Chinese Giant Salamander Andrias Davidianus Farming Industry in Shaanxi Province, China: Conservation Threats and Opportunities View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UCL Discovery Development of the Chinese giant salamander Andrias davidianus farming industry in Shaanxi Province, China: conservation threats and opportunities A NDREW A. CUNNINGHAM,SAMUEL T. TURVEY,FENG Z HOU H ELEN M. R. MEREDITH,WEI G UAN,XINGLIAN L IU,CHANGMING S UN Z HONGQIAN W ANG and M INYAO W U Abstract The Chinese giant salamander Andrias davidia- This paper contains supplementary material that can be nus is endemic to China and is Critically Endangered, lar- found online at http://journals.cambridge.org gely because of overexploitation for food. This species is an expensive delicacy in China, and a rapidly growing in- dustry to farm the species has developed throughout much of the country, centred on the Qinling Mountain re- Introduction gion of Shaanxi Province. During a workshop on Chinese giant salamander conservation, which involved a he Chinese giant salamander Andrias davidianus, the range of stakeholders from across China, it became clear Tlargest amphibian, is categorized as Critically that the conservation community knew little about the sala- Endangered on the IUCN Red List (IUCN, ) and has mander farming industry and whether it posed actual or po- been listed in Appendix I of CITES since (CITES, tential threats or opportunities for conservation of the ). In it was designated a State protected species Chinese giant salamander. We therefore conducted a series in China. The Chinese giant salamander is one of only of investigations to understand the industry better. Our re- three extant species of cryptobranchid salamanders (the sults indicate that although farming of Chinese giant sala- others being the Japanese giant salamander Andrias japoni- manders has the potential to be a positive development cus and the hellbender Cryptobranchus alleganiensis), which . for conservation by supplying market demand with farmed have evolved as a distinct lineage over million years. animals, it is currently more likely to threaten than support For this reason and because of its Critically Endangered sta- conservation of the species, with continued overexploitation tus and an apparent lack of recovery in the wild (Wang et al., and the potential added impacts of infectious disease and ) the Chinese giant salamander has been identified by genetic pollution arising from farming practices such as the EDGE of Existence programme of the Zoological Society movement of animals across the country and the release of London (ZSL) as the amphibian species most in need of of untreated farm wastewater and farmed salamanders to conservation action (Isaac et al., ). the wild. Endemic to China and occupying a range that encompasses mountain tributaries of the Pearl, Yellow and Yangtze Rivers Keywords Andrias davidianus, Chinese giant salamander, across provinces, wild Chinese giant salamanders have Critically Endangered, disease, farming, overexploitation, experienced a severe range-wide decline since the s ranavirus, Shaanxi Province (Wang et al., ), being threatened primarily by overex- ploitation for food, habitat loss and pollution (Wang et al., ; IUCN, ). As it is found at high altitudes this spe- ANDREW A. CUNNINGHAM (Corresponding author), SAMUEL T. TURVEY and HELEN M. R. MEREDITH* Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, Regent’s cies is potentially also vulnerable to climate change (IUCN, Park, London NW1 4RY, UK. E-mail [email protected] ). An additional potential threat is the Chinese giant FENG ZHOU and MINYAO WU (Corresponding author) Shaanxi Normal salamander farming industry, with the combined pressures University, 199 South Chang’an Road, Xi’an 710062, Shaanxi Province, of overexploitation (Wang et al., ), infectious disease China. E-mail [email protected] (Geng et al., ) and loss of genetic integrity (Murphy WEI GUAN,XINGLIAN LIU,CHANGMING SUN and ZHONGQIAN WANG Shaanxi Provincial Fisheries Office, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China et al., ). However, the status of populations of the spe- cies across China, and the threats facing them, have been the *Also at: Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK focus of few studies to date (Wang et al., ; Pierson et al., Received May . Revision requested July . ; Tapley et al., in press), making it difficult to identify Accepted September . priority conservation management actions. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2015 Fauna & Flora International, Oryx, Page 1 of 9 doi:10.1017/S0030605314000842 2 A. A. Cunningham et al. In ZSL and Shaanxi Normal University convened between farms within Shaanxi Province and the sale of ani- the International Conservation Workshop for the Chinese mals to restaurants within the province. Data in these pro- Giant Salamander. In addition to an international contin- posals have been verified by the Shaanxi Provincial Fisheries gent this workshop was attended by . Chinese stake- Office (e.g. by independent site visits). This information was holders representing Chinese government, research, used to identify the main breeding farms in the Qinling re- conservation, communication, education and farming in- gion, and we visited as many of these farms as possible. terests. During the workshop it became clear that farming Given the existence of numerous unlicensed farms and of Chinese giant salamanders is a young but rapidly growing possible inaccurate reporting, province-level data are likely industry, and little was known about this industry by the to represent minimum estimates rather than robust figures. conservation community (Meredith, ). In China this in- Within Chinese provinces, administrative areas are deli- dustry is particularly extensive and well-established within neated by cities, which in turn are subdivided into counties. the Qinling Mountain range in southern Shaanxi Province, Each county and each city are administered by their own tier which is within the natural range of the species and where of local government. Additional information about the farm- large tracts of suitable habitat remain, but where the popu- ing industry was obtained for the counties of Lueyang, Liuba lation status of wild Chinese giant salamanders is unknown. and Mian and for the cities of Hanzhong and Baoji from the Although farms need to be licensed by the relevant provincial local government and local fisheries offices for each of these government’s fisheries office to hold and breed Chinese giant administrative areas. salamanders in captivity and to sell their products legally, the Identified breeding farms were visited during May – size and structure of the industry is largely unknown. Further October by the authors from Shaanxi Normal University, to the workshop we collated data held by the Shaanxi and a standard series of questions was asked (Supplementary Provincial Fisheries Office and conducted a series of field in- Material ) using a targeted sampling strategy (Newing, ). vestigations to understand the development and structure of To build trust between researchers and farmers, to identify the farming industry better and to gauge the threats to con- the most knowledgeable people to interview and to maximize servation, and potential conservation benefits, of this indus- the quality of information obtained, a series of visits was try. Here we report the outcomes of these investigations. made to each farm prior to the questionnaire interview. The fol- lowing additional information about each farm visited was ob- tained from the records of the Shaanxi Provincial Fisheries Methods Office: set-up costs, number of staff employed, and whether or not the farm had a licence to breed Chinese giant Interview survey and focus group methods followed ZSL’s salamanders. guidelines for ensuring appropriate ethical standards in pro- In December MW convened and ran three -day jects involving data collection from people for research pur- training courses on the biology and captive husbandry of poses. The study was approved by ZSL’s Ethics Committee Chinese giant salamanders (two in Feng county and one (human impacts; project reference WLE/). All infor- in Liuba county), in partnership with the local fisheries of- mants were told about the aims of the survey and were as- fices. Each course was attended by c. salamander farmers, sured that data would be analysed anonymously. Interviews primarily smallholders (see below) but also by those run- were only conducted following verbal consent and approval ning large farms. Following each training course an infor- by participants, and their cooperation in completing an in- mal focus group was convened, with c. participants per terview questionnaire represents our record of their verbal group, all of whom were local residents of the Qinling consent. Written consent was not requested on account of Mountain area of Shaanxi Province. The use of course par- cultural sensitivities and to avoid distinguishing between lit- ticipants ensured the focus groups comprised local people erate and illiterate participants. Information was recorded who were familiar with the Chinese giant salamander. using standardized, anonymized answer sheets before Five additional informal focus groups (two in Liuba county, being entered into an electronic
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