Johannesburg - In a quarantined section of the Joburg Zoo, the battle continues to save hundreds of amphibians and reptiles rescued at OR Tambo International Airport.
A week after their rescue, they are dying. The death register on Thursday stood at 500, nearly a third of the consignment of 1 600 reptiles and amphibians found in two crates last week.
“The challenge is that we have so many animals and so little space to work in,” said Dr Brett Gardner, a vet at the zoo. The space they work in is quarantined because they don’t want diseases either being transmitted from the hospitalised animals to the local species or the other way around.
The animals came from Madagascar, where it is believed they had been collected for the exotic pet trade.
OR Tambo International was a transit stop – their destination was Atlanta. But the flight was cancelled because of bad weather in the US.
No one knows how long the animals had been without food or water.
It means Gardner and his staff are fighting malnutrition and dehydration suffered by many of the rescued creatures.
Others have developed skin infections, caused by contact with the dead animals.
“A lot have improved, others are not improving, and I suspect those are the ones that were without food and water the longest,” said Gardner.
The zoo asked a local pet shop to provide cages, food and moss for the frogs.
The consignment included at least 30 different species of geckos, frogs, chameleons, skinks (smooth-bodied lizards with short or absent limbs), lizards and toads, that occur throughout Madagascar.
Some of the frogs species are the size of a thumbnail, which makes them difficult to work with.
The animals were discovered when a National Council of SPCA’s (NSPCA) inspector noticed a bad smell coming from the cargo holding facility at the airport.
The smell was from the already dead and decaying animals.
The NSPCA have launched an investigation.
“We are in the process of contacting the Madagascan and US authorities and Cites (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) to see what steps can be taken,” said Ainsley Hay, manager of the NSPCA wildlife protection unit.
“When you are getting an animal for $1 (R11) and then selling it on for $100 (R1 111), you don’t have to have high survival rates,” Gardner said.
It is unlikely the animals will be sent back to Madagascar; there are volunteers who are willing to adopt them.
In the future, Gardner is hoping to establish a task team that will be able to mobilise quickly to deal with other such consignments. - The Star