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 Introduction much of the country, centred on the Qinling Mountain re- he Chinese giant salamander Andrias davidianus, the gion of Shaanxi Province. During a workshop on Tlargest amphibian, is categorized as Critically Chinese giant salamander conservation, which involved a Endangered on the IUCN Red List (IUCN, ) and has range of stakeholders from across China, it became clear been listed in Appendix I of CITES since (CITES, that the conservation community knew little about the sala- ). In it was designated a State protected species mander farming industry and whether it posed actual or po- in China. The Chinese giant salamander is one of only tential threats or opportunities for conservation of the three extant species of cryptobranchid salamanders (the Chinese giant salamander. We therefore conducted a series others being the Japanese giant salamander Andrias japoni- of investigations to understand the industry better. Our re- cus and the hellbender Cryptobranchus alleganiensis), which sults indicate that although farming of Chinese giant sala- have evolved as a distinct lineage over . million years. manders has the potential to be a positive development For this reason and because of its Critically Endangered sta- for conservation by supplying market demand with farmed tus and an apparent lack of recovery in the wild (Wang et al., animals, it is currently more likely to threaten than support ) the Chinese giant salamander has been identified by conservation of the species, with continued overexploitation the EDGE of Existence programme of the Zoological Society and the potential added impacts of infectious disease and of London (ZSL) as the amphibian species most in need of genetic pollution arising from farming practices such as conservation action (Isaac et al., ). movement of animals across the country and the release Endemic to China and occupying a range that encompasses of untreated farm wastewater and farmed salamanders to mountain tributaries of the Pearl, Yellow and Yangtze Rivers the wild. across provinces, wild Chinese giant salamanders have Keywords Andrias davidianus, Chinese giant salamander, experienced a severe range-wide decline since the s Critically Endangered, disease, farming, overexploitation, (Wang et al., ), being threatened primarily by overex- ranavirus, Shaanxi Province ploitation for food, habitat loss and pollution (Wang et al., ; IUCN, ). As it is found at high altitudes this spe- cies is potentially also vulnerable to climate change (IUCN, ). An additional potential threat is the Chinese giant salamander farming industry, with the combined pressures of overexploitation (Wang et al., ), infectious disease ANDREW A. CUNNINGHAM (Corresponding author), SAMUEL T. TURVEY and HELEN M. R. MEREDITH* Institute of Zoology, Zoological Society of London, Regent’s (Geng et al., ) and loss of genetic integrity (Murphy Park, London NW1 4RY, UK. E-mail [email protected] et al., ). However, the status of populations of the spe- FENG ZHOU and MINYAO WU (Corresponding author) Shaanxi Normal cies across China, and the threats facing them, have been the University, 199 South Chang’an Road, Xi’an 710062, Shaanxi Province, focus of few studies to date (Wang et al., ; Pierson et al., China. E-mail [email protected] ; Tapley et al., in press), making it difficult to identify WEI GUAN,XINGLIAN LIU,CHANGMING SUN and ZHONGQIAN WANG Shaanxi Provincial Fisheries Office, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China priority conservation management actions. In ZSL and Shaanxi Normal University convened *Also at: Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK the International Conservation Workshop for the Chinese Received May . Revision requested July . Giant Salamander. In addition to an international contin- Accepted September . First published online March . gent this workshop was attended by . Chinese 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, Downloadeddistribution, from https://www.cambridge.org/core and reproduction in any medium,. IP address: provided 170.106.40.40 the original work, onis 30 properly Sep 2021 cited. at 05:55:47, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/termsOryx, 2016, 50(2), 265–273 ©. https://doi.org/10.1017/S00306053140008422015 Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605314000842 266 A. A. Cunningham et al. stakeholders 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 database accessible only two in Chenggu county and one in Hantai county) were