# Has anyone seen what 'www.dartfrog.co.uk' is selling?



## dmartin72 (Oct 27, 2004)

Has anyone seen what europe is openly selling? How the heck are they getting all these frogs? :shock: 

http://www.dartfrog.co.uk/amphibians.html


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## steelcube (Mar 17, 2004)

I'd say... good for them!!  

SB


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## mnchartier (May 9, 2005)

The Dendrobates vanzolinii is a beautiful frog along with the mysterious. Hopefully someday they will become available on the US market.


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## Dane (Aug 19, 2004)

Those Vicentei are some of the coolest frogs I've ever seen. I really like the arboreus too. How is it that while I'm only about 2500 miles land distance from some of these frogs, I can only dream about them, and yet people separated from them by 5000 miles of ocean have no problem getting them?


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## ChrisMc (Mar 7, 2004)

It would be nice to obtain those legally... Who in their right mind would sell a breeding group of mysteriosus or pairs of vanzolinii??


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## *GREASER* (Apr 11, 2004)

I have come across that site a few times and I could never beleave that what they were selling was true. I would keep looking at the last time it was updated and it was always very recent. I thought for sure it was some outdated site that had frogs for sale when they were less popular. If they only sent frogs over to the states. One of my good friends has a bunch of friends all over the Uk. I wonder if they could get them sent over here.


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## Guest (May 27, 2005)

*cant beleive*

Those frogs are amazing The pumilio blow my mind I cant wait until I get mine. :wink: 
later


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## rmelancon (Apr 5, 2004)

There are many more dart frog smugglers overseas than in the US. Less stringent border controls are one reason.


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## Arklier (Mar 1, 2004)

Not all the rare frogs in Europe are illegally imported. Dart frogging in Europe has been popular for longer than in the US, and was more advanced for a long time, if it's not still more advanced now. Those frogs could be decendants from when all the exporting was going on during the early 90s. Not likely, but possible.


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## geckguy (Mar 8, 2004)

It is possible that some of the frogs are legal, but in this case they are not.
Some of the frogs were never legally exported from their countries of origin in the first place. I don't believe that the Europeans are more advanced then us, they just put everything in huge expensive vivs, and have access to lots of smuggled frogs.


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## cbreon (Apr 25, 2005)

*WOW*

Some of those frogs are the stuff dreams are made of. Anybody want to import some d vicente for me


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## Guest (Jun 14, 2005)

the frog names you are speaking of arent listed except for the pumilio which frogs are you talking about


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## cbreon (Apr 25, 2005)

the d. vicente and others were available at the time of the post


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## Guest (Jun 14, 2005)

oh right ok i missed that


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## Guest (Jun 15, 2005)

*dartfrog.co.uk*

mwuhahaha! i live in the uk and i have dealt with this company many times, they are great and very helpfull. they also have alot of plants which ive not seen in many other places. the wide range of frogs on their website is very good and im sure are perfectly legal. accusing them of being smuggled is a pretty heinous accusation to make.


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## MPepper (Feb 29, 2004)

Louis,
Are you serious? If they were advertising pairs of vanzolini, they were illegal, or laundered. Peru has never have exported vanzolini, and im pretty sure brazil hasnt either, possibly maybe for scientific reason, and if that is the case they would be similar to the casti situation.
who is even breeding vanzolini, let alone selling prs of them, think logically here, obviously WC frogs, or frogs with illegal origin. They might very well have entered the UK with papers from say Denmark or Holland for example, but they are the result of smuggling!, in one form or another.
And we all know the situation on mysteriosus. NEVER exported from peru with CITES permits, despite the holes that exist in CITES, and its enforcement, these frogs all originate from smuggling, whether you choose to believe it or not.
Now did they actually have these frogs, or were they advertising them in anticipation of recieving them, as a large shipment was recently confiscated in Lima containing a large number of vanzolini and mysteriosus? 
great and helpful people they may be, but i wouldnt say its heinous to question the legality of these frogs in question.


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## Guest (Jun 15, 2005)

I have talked to marc and I belive that you are right they are a result of smugging, but not done by marc. He is a very nice guy and we a quite along chat about those frogs.
brooks


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## dmartin72 (Oct 27, 2004)

If he is selling them, he is perpetuating the continuation of this smuggling!


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2005)

Pretty sad  

smuggling is getting out of control.

Cheers

Xavier


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2005)

Can I just make it clear that we did not go ahead with bringing these frogs into the UK once we discovered they were illegal imports. As soon as we found out that they were smuggled we took them off our list. This only came to light when we requested CITES paperwork from the supplier in Germany.
As reported elsewhere on this forum the shipment was confiscated anyway. We do intend to support the INIBICO project once it starts exporting frogs though.
Regards
Tim


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## Shockfrog (Apr 14, 2004)

confiscated?? the green and red vicentei and arboreus were allready in europe at the time this add was put on the website, just as some Dendrobates minutes. The mysteriosus also wouldn't be difficult to get your hands on as these are breeding like rabbits in europe. 

Remco


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2005)

These frogs all came fro mthe Netherlands, the Dutch and Germans have been keeping Vivariums long before anyone else, hence why there so bad ass. Dont kow too much about the legallity, but there are some breeding companis in the Netherlands that have been about for a very long time.

http://www.kwekerijrana.nl/

http://www.vivaria.nl/

i know he gets most his frogs from these guys, ill be going there myself once i get my viv up and running.


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## Guest (Jun 20, 2005)

*smuggling*

i didn't mean that the frogs definately arent smuggled i wouldnt really know about that anyway, i just meant that the people who run dartfrog are decent chaps and im sure they arent directly involved in any criminal activity.


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## Marcus (Apr 18, 2004)

rmelancon said:


> There are many more dart frog smugglers overseas than in the US. Less stringent border controls are one reason.



May I mention that a lot of flights are via american airports and because of 9/11 all lugage has to get out of the plane ..controlled by you guys...and back in. So the lugage will be checked for a minimum of three times. When it get in..in the states and on arrival in europe. Flights from Surinam, Colombia and Peru are double checked and you know why. So i don't know why you have that idea of less stringent border controls Rob??? Have you ever travelled to central or south america? or to Europe the last few years?

Your other point of more frogsmugglers is also strange...based on what? Aren't there more frogkeepers in the us then in europe? and if there are more keepers there is more chance to sell illegal frogs and therefore interesting for smugglers. I don't know if you know how many frogkeepers there are in the Netherlands and Germany? My guess for the Netherlands is between 1000 - 1500 people. Our total population is 16 million. I think there will be around 10.000 frogkeepers in Germany but that's a guess but i don't think the guess isn't bad. Total population of Germany is 84 million people.
Total population of the usa is 290 million people....so how many frogkeepers will be there? Maybe i am worng with this conclusion but the way you point to the europeans is in my opinion a little bit too easy.


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## Guest (Jun 22, 2005)

i think its because there have been dartfroggers in europe for longer than in the usa and in europe and the uk we can get hold of some of the rarer frogs a lot easier and a lot of these are offspring from frogs which were smuggled before 9/11 happened and the tighter airport security came in and these smuggled frogs have bred and are now available to private buyers so they may well have started off smuggled but they are now 3rd 4th and 5th generation CB offspring probably even further than that but these captives may in the future play an important part if they ever need to be reintroduced to the wild


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## MPepper (Feb 29, 2004)

Marcus,

regardless of border controls, airport security, baggage checks and all, many of the large shipments of smuggled frogs, atleast fom peru are being sent out in shipments of fish, or sent out as fish, so the weak link in security or customs inspection is in peru, and neither the Department of Fisheries or INRENA recieves sufficient funding to police this properly. Most of these shipments when trans-shipped through another country, be it the US, Canada, or whereever are not inspected, a quick paperwork check and on their way, so it is more up to the destination country to police what is coming in, as opposed to the country of trans-shippment. As much as i would like to place blame on the US gov't for several issues, I can't see the logic in blaming them for missing frogs in transhipped packages or luggage.

I dont think Rob meant any disrespect saying there are more smugglers in europe, but look at the situation objectively, regardless of how many frog keepers there are in the US, the vast majority or new frogs are arriving in Europe first, look at all the recent arrivals of the vicentei morphs, the 'arboreus' type frog, the minyobates, the green legged lamasi, vanzolini, mystis and i could go on, but these all arrive in Europe first.

And using the argument that these were brougt in pre cites and the result of captive breeding just doesn't work with these examples. Though the ultimate destination of these shipments may be indeed to other countries, (and im sure it wont be long before vicentei are "legally" imported into NA) the majority arrive in europe where they are often sold to the North America, asia, and other countries, and as i have said before, i belive anyone buying these frogs from the smugglers is just as guilty as the smugglers themselves.

Marcus I hope you dont take any offence to this. Smuggling is a problem, but its a problem the entire frog keeping community shares, and i think we need to start better policing ourselves before others step in and do the policing for us.

mark


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## Marcus (Apr 18, 2004)

Mark,

Rob is saying something in a very simple way here. When you want to point into a direction like he does you have to come with more information/explantation in my opinion. 
Those fishshipments are just as easily coming in in europe as in every other country...also the usa. These shipments aren't only transshipped in the usa, the enddestination can be the usa. ...so less border control is not only a european 'thing'. That's what I was hoping to clear up here.

_As much as i would like to place blame on the US gov't for several issues, I can't see the logic in blaming them for missing frogs in transhipped packages or luggage. _
I am not blaming them at all..I just say that there is more control on flights and more chance to get caught ..so i don't understand where you get the idea that I am blaming them??? not at all.
My point is....the way Rob is saying it, it sounds like you can get easily on board with a box full of frogs when you go to a country in Europe. I was clearing that up. Maybe Rob is meaning it otherwise but his too small answer is asking on a 'overseas' reply.
My answer is also more about what Rob is saying here than a specific answer on the topic Mark...sorry for that.


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## MPepper (Feb 29, 2004)

Marcus,

I guess I misunderstood what you meant when you wrote this,

_May I mention that a lot of flights are via american airports and because of 9/11 all lugage has to get out of the plane ..controlled by you guys...and back in. So the lugage will be checked for a minimum of three times_

I thought you were saying because luggage was taken of the plane and inspected it was their fault (US Customs) for not finding the any contraband, frogs etc. I guess i read between the lines too much on that statement. Sorry for that.

And you are correct, these shipments have to potential to arrive anywhere, not just in Europe. I think we both agree that this is a problem.

take care,
Mark


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## Marcus (Apr 18, 2004)

yes we agree 8)


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