Common food item: Frogs for sale in a Cambodian street market.
Credit: Mark Auliya
"The problem is CITES only monitors listed species, and most of the traded species [of frogs] aren't listed. This is because there is currently not enough information available to identify many of them [as endangered] … once there is, CITES is logically the first point of call," Bradshaw said.
""[The study is] more a call for concern to prevent declines caused by overharvesting than a presentation of data showing conclusively that they are happening to the point of causing extinctions," commented frog biologist Ross Alford from James Cook University in Townsville, Australia.
"There is an urgent need to monitor [the trade] more closely and gain a better understanding of its impacts and how to control them, and that is a message I would certainly support… I was amazed to find out how little is actually known about this trade," Alford said.
