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BY GLENDA SOLOGASTOA
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ILOILO – First District Provincial Board member Valentin Serag wanted a province-wide ban on the collection and trade of spiders, and spider-wrestling.
During yesterday’s Sangguniang Panlalawigan (SP) regular session, Serag who is the chairman of the committee on agriculture stressed the importance of spiders in the elimination of mosquitoes that spread Zika, dengue and chikungunya diseases.
“We must have a balanced ecosystem. Each member of the ecosystem has a function. Spiders have, too. They can help minimize the mosquito population,” said Serag.
According to Serag, he will check with the SP secretariat if there is an existing ordinance banning the collection and trading of spiders.
If there is none, Serag said, he will draft one.
“Why can’t we capitalize and work with nature and help resolve the problem on Zika, dengue and chikungunya viruses,” Serag said.
Illegal spider trade – both foreign and domestic – can be a main threat to the diversity and conservation of the spider species in the Philippines, as shown in the results of the recently completed study supported by the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP).
Dr. Aimee Lynn A. Barrion-Dupo, NRCP researcher from the Biological Sciences Division and a Research Professor from the University of the Philippines Los Baños, Laguna, reported that spiders, especially forest-dwelling species, are indiscriminately extracted from the wild to feed the growing demand for pet trade and spider-wrestling market in the country.
Dupo explained that collectors and poachers collect these spiders from rice fields adjacent to forests and sell them to gamers for around P5 to as high as P100 a piece for wrestling and derby games that involve large sums of money in form of bets ranging from P500 to P 10,000 for a one-round game.
“Each round can end up with either a dead spider or an injured one. Injured spiders are ‘recycled’ as feedstuff for other derby spiders and are never returned to the wild,” she added.
This scenario poses a great risk to the sustainability of the spider population because 96 percent of the spiders used in wresting are reproductive females, according to Dupo’s report.
Spiders play a crucial role in agriculture and crop protection by serving as primary controllers of insect pests. Without spiders, agriculture will be in peril because crops will be consumed by those pests, stated the report.
The future and sustainability of organic farming will also be uncertain because this agricultural practice relies heavily on biological pest control such as spiders, the report added.
Researchers at foreign research universities and institutions are now studying the potentials of chemicals present in the saliva of spiders in developing pain-control drugs and potential cure for patients suffering from muscular dystrophy, Dupo revealed.
However, there is also a growing international and local demand for spiders (e.g. tarantulas) as pets and certain spiders command high prices in the trade markets.
Traders are lured to persist in the “business” because control measures and regulations are not effectively implemented in terms of trading and collection and the availability of market channels.
Dupo reported that traders openly sell online even the Philippine endemic spider species Orphnaecus philippinus for $32 or P1,500 a piece.
Two of our native spider species, Phlogiellus baeri and Orphnaecus philippinus, are openly exported as pets without restrictions.
A quick search in the internet reveals the rampant open selling of our native tarantulas to local buyers and international traders. (With reports from nrcp.dost.gov.ph/PN)
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