Big Appetite for Frog Legs & Healthier Paint

Frogs have even less of a leg up...

This is The Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams in for Lester Graham.

Frog legs are showing up on more menus all over Europe and North America. We’re actually right behind France in our imports of frog legs here in the states. And it’s hard to know exactly how many frogs are being eaten because only a fraction is reported in global trade numbers. So... at least 200 million but maybe as many as one billion frogs are eaten every year.

Biologists say... this is bad news for frogs. Frogs are already in serious trouble from habitat loss and a fatal disease caused by a fungus.

Ian Warkentin has been looking at our appetite for frog legs. He’s the lead author of a new study in the journal Conservation Biology.

He says some frogs are raised for food... but most of the frogs are taken from the wild.

“There was a harvest in North America and a harvest in Europe that depleted those stocks and there no longer was a harvest. The source then became India and Bangladesh and now we’re moving to Indonesia and Southeast Asia. And our concern is well, we’re just going to harvest them to the point where there no longer is a viable harvest any more.”

He’d like to see better oversight on wild frog harvests... and more commercial frog farming. But until that happens... he says you might want to take a pass on the frog leg platter.


STING - BULLFROG


This is the Environment Report.

When it's time for a new coat of paint, you might want a paint that doesn't smell so bad that it leaves your head spinning. More states are shaking up paint laws – and forcing companies to roll out paints that aren't as bad for the environment. Julie Grant has this story:

GRANT

That’s the Environment Report. I’m RW.


CREDIT