370 K. Çiçek et al.
harvested frogs from this region, from other parts of Turkey and from neighbouring Syria (harvesters, pers. comm., 2014). Therefore, the impact of the overharvest we have identified may not be immediately reflected in export figures. Our re- search demonstrates that overharvesting damages wild frog populations but despite the efforts of governmental agencies to enforce existing regulations, harvesting threa- tens frog populations not only in our study area, but throughout Anatolia. Scientific findings are rarely used for regulatory decision-making on harvesting, farming and ex- port of frogs. Based on our findings, we conclude that further harvest
restrictions are essential for the sustainability of Anatolian water frog populations. Considering its importance for live- lihoods, a complete ban on harvesting wild frogs is, however, infeasible, and therefore we make five recommendations:
Ban harvest during the mating season The current harvest ban is during 1 May–30 June, but mating of water frogs takes place from late winter to early summer in Turkey, de- pending on the region (authors, unpubl. data). Because of its mild Mediterranean climate, mating occurs earlier in our study area, during 15 February–15 April. Therefore the harvest ban needs to be adjusted to regional conditions.
Obligatory training for all harvesters Although rarely con- ducted in Turkey, training is required to provide harvesters with basic species knowledge and awareness of regulations and to improve the sustainability of harvesting.
Quota based systems Limiting each export firm’s harvest during a given period could be an effective way to limit har- vest because each harvest location is controlled by a single exporter firm at any one time. Inspections should be at the processing and export locations as well as in the harvest locations in the field. This would facilitate sustainable har- vest by both preventing overharvest in the field and by con- trolling the total number of frogs processed. Alternatively, harvest locations could be closed every other year to relieve the pressure on individual populations.
Effective enforcement of size limits If the 30 gminimum size restriction could be applied effectively, the number of frogs collected would decrease markedly. As for a quota system, it would be easier to enforce this limit at the processing and export stages.
Frog farming The number of farmed frogs exported is cur- rently limited but farming could be encouraged by the gov- ernment as an alternative to collecting wild frogs.
Sustainable rates of wild harvest depend on the abun-
dance and demography of populations, the behaviour and life-history characteristics of a species (Schlaepfer et al., 2005), and socio-economic factors (Klemens & Thorbjarnarson, 1995; Reynolds et al., 2001), and thus determining sustainable
harvesting rates is complex.Our data and analysis provide the ini- tial steps for this process.
Author contributions Study design and fieldwork: KÇ, DA, MA, YB, OC, İBİ; data analysis and writing: KÇ, HRA, CCB, YB, ÇA, EÜ, DA, MY, CVT.
Acknowledgements This study was financially supported by TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, Project number: 112T913) and EBILTEM (Ege University Science and Technology Centre, Project number: 2013/BİL/013). We thank Dr. Jörg Plötner for early discussions and Mr. Vahdettin Kürüm for providing frog trade statistics.
Conflicts of interest None.
Ethical standards This research abided by the Oryx guidelines on ethical standards and the protocol was approved by the Laboratory Animals Ethical Committee at Ege University, Turkey (Decision No. 2012/29).
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