Appetite for Frogs’ Legs Harming Wild Populations

We are almost immune to hearing about how disease, climate change, and habitat degradation are endangering wildlife in general, and that includes concerns about the fate of amphibians as well. Now conservationists are warning that frogs in particular could be going the same way as the cod.

The reason for this is a bit surprising — gastronomic demand — which is reportedly depleting regional populations to the point of no return.

David Bickford of the National University of Singapore and colleagues have called for more regulation and monitoring in the global frog meat market in order to avoid species being “eaten to extinction”.

Statistics on imports and exports of frog legs are sparse as few countries keep track of the amount of meat harvested and consumed domestically. No one anticipated that this information would one day be of such importance.

According to UN figures, global trade has increased in the past 20 years. France — not surprisingly — and the U.S. are the two largest importers; with France importing between 2500 and 4000 tonnes of frog meat each year since 1995.

In the West frog legs are basically considered a French dish, but they are also very popular in Asia.

Bickford estimates that between 180 million to over a billion frogs are harvested each year. “That is based on both sound data and an estimate of local consumption for just Indonesia and China,” he says. “The actual number I suspect is quite a bit larger and my 180 million bare minimum is almost laughably conservative.”

Local Depletion

Astonishingly enough, even top French chefs sometimes do not know where their frogs are coming from. Bruno Stril, teaching chef at the Cordon Bleu school in Paris, France, is unsure where his suppliers source their frog legs. “I would like for them to come from France,” he says. But he expects that most of the meat comes from other countries.

That’s not an exaggeration. Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of frog meat, exporting more than 5000 tonnes a year, mostly to France, Belgium and Luxemburg.

Bickford and colleagues claim European kitchens harvested their supplies from the surrounding countryside, but now they are importing from Asia which suggests local populations were over-harvested. This, they say, could be an indication that frog populations, like many fish populations, will face near extinction if harvesting is not better monitored.

“Overexploitation in the seas has caused a chain reaction of fishery collapses around the world,” the researchers write. “This experience should motivate better management of other exploited wild populations.”

Anonymous Legs

James Collins, of the World Conservation Union, cites the Californian red-legged frog as evidence for the theory. The species was first harvested for food in the 19th century California gold rush and eventually the population began to crash.

However, Collins cautions that “at the moment we have no data indicating that commercial exploitation has led to the extinction of any amphibian species.”

Most harvested frogs are skinned, butchered and frozen before being shipped overseas, making it difficult to know exactly what species are being killed. Indonesia mostly exports crab-eating frogs, giant Jana frogs, and American bullfrogs. But it isn’t known how much frog meat is consumed within the entire country. Some studies suggest it could be between two and seven times what is exported.

“There are a heck of a lot of frogs being eaten,” says Bickford. “Much more than most people have a clue about.”