Saving the salamander

Species prized in China for its meat and health-giving properties

Professor Wu has tiny eyes, a sly grin, slimy skin, and spends most of his time dozing. He may sound like a strange ambassador for a campaign, but he is one of the world's biggest living amphibians and is critically endangered.

Professor Wu arrived at the London Zoo in November last year as part of the Zoological Society of London's attempts to save the Chinese giant ), known in China as wawayu, or crying babyfish because of the sound it makes.

The society hopes to raise awareness about the amphibian and to establish a new breeding facility in China where experts can raise the creatures and, eventually, release them safely into the wild.

Professor Wu will not play a direct role in such activities, but the society hopes he will get zoo visitors to think about the rapid decline of the Chinese giant salamander in the wild. The species, found in central, southwestern and southern China, has experienced an 80 percent drop in population in recent decades, leaving fewer than 50,000 of them, although precise information is scarce.

Researchers list pollution, climate change and the Chinese appetite for unusual foods as the main factors for dwindling numbers. Chinese law protects giant salamander, but it is permissible to eat those bred in captivity and their meat can cost up to $300 per kilogram.

In January, senior public security officials were caught enjoying a 6,352 yuan ($1,000; 910 euros) feast in Shenzen, Guangdong province. The Southern Metropolis Daily reported that the diners were using public funds to pay for the banquet, where the salamander was on the menu.

In September, the city of Zhangjiajie, Hunan province, held a three-day festival to promote giant salamander cuisine and products. City officials said the festival would become an annual event to promote salamander-based tourism.

"Giant salamander farming, which requires clean water, actually drives locals to protect the environment," Xinhua quoted Liu Qun as saying. "The industry also helps lift locals out of poverty."

Officials said that all the meat was legally obtained. However Richard Thomas, from the wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic, told AFP: "There is a very real risk that promoting increased consumption of giant salamander will lead to increased demand that cannot be met from farmed sources - with catastrophic consequences for the last surviving wild populations."

Becky Chen, project coordinator in China for the Zoological Society of London, says: "As far as I know, it is just a recent fashion for people to eat giant salamander. It is also thought that they are a clean food, without pollution, as giant salamander only live in clean mountain rivers."

Commercial farming is prospering and the farming of Chinese giant salamander is now one of the three most important economic activities in northwestern Shaanxi province, which has most of the country's licensed Chinese giant salamander farms. The size of breeding farms varies, with most holding several hundred adults and larger companies accommodating 2,000 or more breeding stock.

Tens of thousands of families in the region rely on the salamander farming industry for their income, and the creature's high economic value is leading to unsustainable and unregulated harvesting from the wild.

"Professor Wu has been a fantastic ambassador of the program. He is doing well to help make a link between the zoo's work and the fieldwork we have in China. The zoo is a great venue to highlight the conservation scheme," says Ben Tapley with the London Zoo's reptile and amphibian team.

Tapley says Professor Wu will become a cartoon character as a way to overcome a lack of awareness about the amphibian.

Named affectionately after one of the project's partners in China, Professor Wu is the only Chinese giant salamander in the United Kingdom. He is 19 years old and 1.3 meters long.

Chinese giant salamander can grow up to 1.8 meters in length and are the world's largest surviving amphibian species. They are part of an ancient group of salamander that diverged from their closest relatives during the Jurassic period over 170 million years ago.

There is little existing knowledge of the species, which makes conservation work difficult.

"Wild salamander have only been detected in a few sites since 2012. Villagers also reported significant population decline and regional extinction of wild populations since about 20 to 30 years ago," says Chen.

Surveys have been carried out among villagers to strengthen the evidence base on the species, an exercise that may help conservationists to make sound decisions about how best to help the amphibian.

Chinese giant salamander are listed as critically endangered on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Red List, a standard accepted by many governments and conservation groups. It is under state protection as a Grade 2 protected species in China.

A lack of biosecurity measures also exposes farms to unnecessary disease risks. Outbreaks on farms may have led to genetic pollution of the wild population. Releasing farmed Chinese giant salamander of unknown origin into the wild might boost numbers, but it could also threaten them with disease, according to researchers.

Chen says there is a need to enhance protection and monitoring, as well as the preservation of underwater cultural heritage in its original locations.

"It is also important to raise conservation awareness of wild giant salamander and engage stakeholders at the key reserves where this species is still present."

London Zoo is working with commercial salamander farmers to both reduce disease on the farms and to prevent wild salamander from being harvested.

"It's positive so far. Companies and farmers are happy to work with us. But China is a huge country, so it's difficult to engage everybody. We are also trying to establish a salamander identification scheme to help," says Tapley.

The Chinese giant salamander has great cultural value for Chinese people in terms of cuisine and traditional Chinese medicine. It was nicknamed Zhubuchi, which translates as "pig doesn't eat", because during the food shortages of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) pigs were fed Chinese giant salamander but refused to eat them.

Thomas says zoos have a vital conservation role to play in ensuring that highly threatened species survive and, ultimately, populations in the wild can be sustained and revived.

"Obviously there's a great deal that can be learned if species are being kept and bred in zoos - about their ecological requirements - and this can help with conservation efforts for wild populations," he adds.

For China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 11/06/2015 page29)