What is the most important way forward for New Zealand's gecko keepers?
Geckos have been kept and bred in captivity in New Zealand for in excess of sixty years now, and I am sure most keepers would like to ensure that the opportunity to do so is retained for future generations of keepers. But to make sure that this possibility is preserved, we need to be mindful of issues that could prevent this happening.
Since 1981, legal protection has been in place which has prevented captive breeders from obtaining further animals from the wild to enhance the captive gene pool. The responsibility for maintaining and best utilising the resources that we currently have, therefore falls squarely on the shoulders of those who currently keep and breed these beautiful and intriguing animals.
So what can we do better? In my view, we need to make much greater collective efforts to ensure that we don't, as individuals, allow persistent inbreeding to reduce the viability of those animals we currently have. If we allow new keepers to simply take numbers of already inbred animals from an existing breeder, and continue to inbreed them further, then we may be heading for the day when our beloved hobby founders on the rock of inbreeding depression.
How do we counter this? In my view, we as keepers should not allow newcomers to have numbers of our surplus animals simply because we want to get rid of them. New members should be encouraged to start their foray into the hobby with animals from as many sources as possible. Existing keepers should consider providing new keepers with animals of one sex only, so that the founding stock for new breeding groups get males from one breeder and females from another, ensuring a degree of genetic separation. It would in fact be better to go further and get each individual animal from a different group For example, get three females and two males from five different sources. Then breed one of the males to the three females in the first year, and use the other male in the second year. Keep rotating the males on an annual basis.
This raises the question of the number of cages needed for successful, sustainable captive breeding. Is one cage sufficient to achieve anything worthwhile? Possibly to instil the basis of successful keeping, but in the long term much more can be achieved using multiple cages for each species. This may be difficult for individual breeders with limited space, but what about a number of keepers working co-
There have been projects which have been developed to breed animals in captivity for reintroduction to the wild. Animals from current captive sources are not suitable for this, but could we not emulate the methods used for these, to produce more of our captive stock for future generations of keepers? The possibility of revitalising inbred animals by controlled outbreeding would be in itself a useful exercise in view of the possible knowledge that we would stand to gain.
I have raised these points as a basis for discussion. It strikes me that as well as being beneficial for the animals concerned, keepers could also benefit from working together, rather than in isolation. Some lateral thinking could well do the gecko keeping community a lot of good, and raise the level of satisfaction for those involved.
Rod Rowlands
July 2019