I’ve found a ton of Instagram insect sellers who slap “sustainably sourced”, but never seem to elaborate what they mean by “sustainable”. Curious! So I checked their pages to see what I can find.
This one didn’t even try to hide it. You can see labels stating origin country and collection date. 1/9
This one didn’t even try to hide it. You can see labels stating origin country and collection date. 1/9
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TaxidermyArtistry claims to sell captive bred or from “sustainable” sources, yet more than half of its catalogue are insects or even lizards which aren’t readily available in captivity for obvious reasons! 4/9
Everything you find about insect farming will be about food insects such as BSF.
If breeders from Southeast Asia kept selling “captive bred” beetles of enormous sizes this would be groundbreaking news in the East Asian beetle hobby, but it’s not the case. 6/9
The same applies to Eupatorus gracilicornis in the other post. They’re also very frequently exported.
It would be really interesting to scrap web data from these unethical e-sellers and write a scientific report!
You can DM me if you are interested! 😁
I remember this photo from a Japanese collector this year showing his Megachile pluto which is currently for sale.
Although the apparent rarity of M. pluto can be attributed to its unique nesting behaviour, it has dire implications for the conservation of insects.
Every time I see something like this, I'm strongly considering collecting their nicknames or @ and tracking down their offers...
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/irvine-native-to-face-federal-charges-of-trying-to-smuggle-endangered-butterflies-into-u-s/