Insect collecting booms along with lucrative black market

ABC NEWS (Australia)

More people are keeping insects as pets and even some bugs such as cockroaches are priced at up to $80. But poachers who trade the critters from protected areas are coming at a cost to the ecosystem.

Transcript

00:00They're not cute and cuddly, but to some, bugs are the coolest creations.

00:09They're recycling, they're pest controlling for free, they're pruning your plants, they're

00:17the fast food in nature.

00:20Appreciation for these critters could be what's driving the popularity of insects as pets,

00:26with even some cockroaches commanding a high price.

00:30Anything up to $80 a cockroach?

00:32Capturing bugs in the wild to sell as pets can be a lucrative game, but it's a legal

00:38and ethical minefield.

00:41Native wildlife poaching is regulated by each state and territory, with penalties including

00:46jail time or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

00:49Most permits allowing invertebrate collection in protected areas are for science.

00:54People who farm insects to sell need a licence, but the industry is aware of poachers trading

01:00collected bugs, saying they're ethically captive bred, misleading customers.

01:06They need to be empowered to make good decisions to make sure they're getting their pets from

01:09people who are not taking things from the wild and selling them directly on, but are

01:14rather rearing things sustainably.

01:16If somebody is supplying 200 scorpions every month or even more to various pet shops, they're

01:23almost certainly not captive breeding them.

01:25That insect can't do its special job on a planet which Dr Umbers says is under stress

01:31by land clearing and climate change.

01:34You could ask the same question of taking a platypus out of the wild or a koala out

01:37of the wild.

01:38That animal can no longer do its function in the ecosystem.

01:42But growing insect interest could solve the sticky situation.

01:47There's a lot of young people coming up through the ranks now who have been influenced and

01:52there's been a paradigm shift I think around the way we treat bugs and the way we care

01:58for them and what we think about them.

02:00Helping little bugs make a big difference.

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