VIETNAM

Community farming of geckos could well
benefit the Vietnamese economy and environment. Or
so believes Bob Murphy, a
herpetologist at the Royal
Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, who recently
paid a second visit to
Vietnam to catalogue the
new species of lizards.
Murphy has undertaken a us
$15,600 mission to protect
the species which is used
extensively in traditional
medicine in Asia. "I wanted
to try and figure out a way to
prevent the constant pulling
out of animals from the
wild," says Murphy.

Murphy is convinced
that captive breeding is the
answer to this decimation of
the gecko population. The
lizards breed well in captivity
and cat insects that can be
captured with nets in any
field. According to some estimates, a dozen animals
would have some 40 offspring a year. To start the
project, Murphy plans to
raise cash to transport a few
experts with interpreters to
the villages, to buy farm
equipment and for wages to
support villagers until the
first crop of geckus is ready.