Spare Frogs, Help the Environment, Wildlife Unit Urges

The World Wildlife Fund called Wednesday for a ban on the eating of frog legs to prevent an ecological disaster in Asian countries.

“This year over 200 million frogs, all of which are taken from the wild, will be imported to meet the demands of the world’s gourmets,” the conservation agency said in its monthly newsletter. More than 150 million of the frogs--their legs hacked off while they are still alive--are exported by Bangladesh, India and Indonesia, it said.

Frogs are crucial to the ecological system because they eat insects like mosquitoes, which spread malaria and other diseases, it said, and disappearance of the frogs has led to uncontrolled use of expensive and dangerous pesticides such as DDT.

“It is believed that the annual removal from Bangladesh of 70 million frogs, which consume on a daily basis more than 100 tons of insects including mosquitoes, may cause an increase in malaria as well as create an imbalance in the ecosystem,” World Wildlife Federation editor Elizabeth Kemf said in her article. “In addition, the cost of importing the pesticides exceeds revenue earned” from frog leg exports.

The wildlife group said its West German and Swiss branches are already campaigning for hotels and restaurants to stop serving frog legs, and it called for a worldwide ban “to avoid an ecological catastrophe” in Asian countries.