This statement is very sketchy... "A buddy of mine was recently over there and he said all you had to at night was walk around and you can find them like we find anoles here. They were everywhere."



Sorry for being very opinionated, and I’m not trying to start anything here, but I correspond on a academic level to experts and professionals who say the EXACT opposite... One happens to conduct genetic research on Uroplatus... His primary research interest is Lemurs, but regardless he spends several months a year living in Madagascar... And in a two week research trip to Madagascar by several of my peers (who are professionals at a highly touted conservation institution) to the "heart" of Uro grounds (Ankarafantika, Ambanja and the Lokobe Reserve to name a few) saw a SINGLE Uroplatus henkeli... I would not go as far as to say that they run around like anoles... "A. sagrei is highly invasive; it reaches high population densities, shows exponential range expansion and is competitively superior to and a predator of native lizards" ( Kolbe et al., Genetic variation increases during biological invasion by a Cuban lizard. Nature 431, 177-181 (2004).) This little blurb says it all, and I’ll just add that anolis lizards seem to thrive in disrupted habitat (ie. developed by humans). Uroplatus are in deep trouble unless things change, and you certainly won’t find them hopping boats to mainland Africa and Asia and spreading like wild fire. They are increasingly becoming geographically and genetically isolated because of obvious reasons. Sorry, but “a buddy of mine” story doesn’t cut it for me and it certainly doesn’t rest my mind about the plight of this genus... I too do not expect very tight restrictions on the importation, but they certainly cannot withstand collection of “tens of thousands” of specimens… Just my two cents…
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Ben

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