For a number of years, the world has seen declining numbers of amphibians, especially frogs and salamanders. Whit Gibbons is an ecologist at the University of Georgia and author of the report. He says the international market for reptile meat, skins and eggs is pushing turtles, snakes, lizards and crocodiles toward extinction. For example, Gibbons says 90 species of Asian turtles are being taken at a faster rate than they can reproduce. A third of the turtle species in the world are being transported from some of the Southeast Asian countries, mainly into China, and it is a commercial trade that is unsustainable.
Gibbons says the leatherback sea turtle faces a similar threat.
Illegal hunting has caused a steady decline in the number of young leatherback turtles over the past 20 years. Gibbons says the world's reptiles face a variety of other threats, including urban sprawl right in our own communities. This is a problem very apparent in the United States, and many other countries as well, that the environment is used in whatever the easiest way someone can use it without considering what the impact is on the biodiversity at that area. And reptiles are just one more example of how we're losing our biodiversity. Gibbons says reptile numbers are also declining due to pollution, exotic pests, and global climate change.