CITES listed T's

[lee smith]

i was just reviewing the CITES lists and was wondering if there is any projects running to record numbers of T's in the wild and if there is any projects running to repopulate the stocks in the wild??

the speices on the list are:

Aphonopelma albiceps
Aphonopelma pallidum
Brachypelma spp. (all Brachypelma)

[Simon Batten]

I was talking about this with someone the other day, their veiws were that not enough people care but im not so sure, surely they know roughly how endangered they are it would be a shame for them to go extinct but theres so many in captivity that it wouldnt be too hard to reintroduce them its a bit harder to count tarantulas in the wild than elephants for example

[Warren Beattie]

Thanks to some recent reading and discussion, I learned that Aphonopelma pallidum isn't in the pet/arachnoculture trade. AFAIK. Could make breeding projects difficult, at least among that community.

[lee smith]

i think that more groups should we working on repopulateing the wild stock of T's.

one way of recording rough numbers would be to sytematicly search whole areas for burrows of females and log their exact co-ordinates using GPS, then re-checking the same area every 1-2 years to see if there are any changes or more burrows.

[James Metcalf]

sounds like a good way to do it but there must be a way of checking the actual numbers of t's like a tag or a colour code for the year introduced or found that would give a far better idea of the actual numbers but all t's introduced would all have to be un related or do defects not occur in interbred t's ????????