30 April 2015

With news that the chytrid fungus has reached the UK, OATA is again urging UK amphibian keepers to maintain good biosecurity with their pets to make sure this new fungus does not spread to our wild populations. That means making sure animals absolutely cannot escape into the wild, that water is properly disposed of during changes (we’d say put it down the loo) and never compost any aquarium plants (put them in your rubbish bin not the ‘green’ recycling bin).

To try to prevent the fungus, we’d urge importers to follow our guidance to keep Asiatic newts & salamanders (not European or US animals) at 25°C for 10 days prior to sale to the public. And both importers and retailers need to beef up their advice to customers about good biosecurity. You should be anyway, but it’s now even more important to talk about good biosecurity measures to customers when they’re buying any products for these pets.

Find our guidance here and more information on biosecurity here.

This is the latest guidance on how to help stop the spread of this disease.