The
PAROSPHROMENUS PROJECT

The
PAROSPHROMENUS
PROJECT

P. deissneri latest development

Parosphromenus deissneri – distribution area Bangka, Indonesia

For each species we now start a con­tin­ual doc­u­men­ta­tion of the infor­ma­tion which is gath­ered over time. This we have decided to do because it is becom­ing increas­ingly clear, that the devel­op­ment and changes in the nat­ural habi­tats, and in the occur­ance of the species are hap­pen­ing rapidly. We find it impor­tant that we doc­u­ment as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble in order to estab­lish a rel­a­tive clear pic­ture of what is happening.

The resources of infor­ma­tions are many and var­ied, so infor­ma­tion often becomes spread around on the inter­net and is not col­lected in one place. These infor­ma­tions can come from reports from the local areas, of local experts who observe changes hap­pen­ing, from pri­vate col­lec­tors and local enthu­si­asts who posts on face­book, or it can come from arti­cles, sci­en­tific stud­ies in the fields and many oth­ers. It is there­fore not just one coher­ent report we attempt to make but rather a gath­er­ing of many sources of infor­ma­tion, with the excact men­tion of dates and source of infor­ma­tion. We will how­ever, often not men­tion spe­cific loca­tions pre­cisely, as we wish to pro­tect these as much as possible.

We hope to con­tribute this way to the con­tin­ual increase of under­stand­ing and knowl­edge of the extreme threa­thened sit­u­a­tion of the parosphroe­menus species.

Threats – Extremely high.

Lat­est reports tells us that most of

the orig­i­nal habi­tat is seri­ously changed and p. deissneri

is very dif­fi­cult to find

Around 2016 the last known pair in pri­vate pop­u­la­tion died, and it had for many years been one of the species which actu­ally was never importet nei­ther pri­vate nor com­mer­cial (despite the much uses label of p. deiss­neri to other un-​identified species).

 

The only report about P. deiss­neri has been given by Went­ian Shi, who trav­elled to the island together with his team — Team Bor­neo, his team­mates Ji, Yuhan and Dai, Jianhui.

They vis­ited Bangka Island first time in 2016 and lat­est in 2018, and after this this arti­cle was published.

Redis­cov­ery of the sap­phire from Bangka, Parosphromenus deissneri

In the arti­cle Went­ian Shi describes that the nat­ural habi­tat in most areas has dis­s­ap­peared, and that it was only pos­si­ble to find P. deiss­neri in very very lim­ited areas. Some of these areas at the moment remains untouched, but the threaths are very high and unpredictable.

The PP is try­ing to fol­low the changes in this area, and have been dis­cussing pos­si­ble ways to mon­i­tor or pro­tect these areas. How­ever, this is a dif­fi­cult task, and has not yet been pos­si­ble to act on. It is a project which needs money, sup­port and the sup­port of local experts. Nev­er­the­less, it remains a pri­or­ity focus.