Domestication versus wild chinchillas (tw:some talk about fur farms.)

[RDZCRanch]

Habitat encroachment is the biggest problem for the wild chinchillas. I'm sure poaching still happens, all I said is that only idiots with no knowledge of the fur trade would be out there trying to catch wild chinchillas. The fur that comes from South America comes from fur farmers. There is only one direct buyer of chinchilla pelts that deals with all of the fur farmers. He does not buy his pelts off the street, they come from ranchers.

They also don't keep track of the wild populations of chinchillas, so they don't know what is and is not being poached right now. I can say that there is no one in the U.S. that imported a wild chinchilla unless they have some serious ties to the black market. It would be pointless to do that, IMO, since the domestic chinchillas have better fur than the wild chinchillas.

I guess my information on the species is outdated. I did do my research over 10 years ago and I haven't bothered to update myself. Chinchilla was not always two species but I'm sure the poaching and habitat encroachment have helped them become more divergent so that they can be classified as two separate species. I'd also use the term "species" loosely as there is large debate among the biology community as to what exactly classifies a species. They are even starting to change the phylogeny trees to a more complex network to better describe the relationships between different groups.

 

[mishalaa]

They've known they were two separate species for a while. I read in Chinchilla Care by J. Houston, originally published in the 60s I believe, that a cross between brevicaudata and lanigera resulted in sterile male offspring. Female offspring were fertile, but all of their offspring regardless of what they were bred back to were sterile.

Costina might just be a body type. I don't think I've seen that used in scientific nomenclature anywhere I've read.

 

[tcraighenry]

Yeah, everything I read said they were distinct species with different habitats.

The offspring thing sounds like mules to me too.

 

[Spoof]

I wish I could find the blog, but I ran across one recently where a guy closer to the coast of Peru had seen some wild chinchillas and alerted whatever their wildlife department is.

A group came out and trapped 5 or so of them and took them in for study. The guy was upset because they were feeding them very poorly. Even more so, he had been told at the end of the study they would go to fur farms to improve genetic diversity. I have been curious as to where they ended up.

Anyone else seen this? It was on a personal blog site. Kind of curious as to what happened to the whole thing. It may have been in spanish and translated by google..

 

[ticklechin]

This is what I posted on the wild captured chins used for genetic diversity.

This is what I read about the idiots.

The species is on Appendix I of CITES, and has been protected by law in Chile since 1929, although, as mentioned above, this law has proved difficult to enforce. Currently, almost all chinchilla fur comes from farmed animals, and recent improvements in the quality of captive chinchilla fur has reduced pressure on the remaining wild populations. However, it is also likely that the commercial breeding activities have stimulated the demand for live wild chinchillas to improve the genetic variability of captive stocks. Indeed, several of the eleven wild short-tailed chinchillas captured in 2001 were transferred to a breeding programme in which they were used to boost the genetic diversity of the captive population. Although there is no specific conservation programme in place for the short-tailed chinchilla, the US-based conservation organisation Save the Wild Chinchillas is focusing on raising awareness of the two chinchilla species, promoting research, and conserving wild populations of the long-tailed chinchilla.


http://www.edgeofexistence.org/mammals/species_info.php?id=57

 

[mishalaa]

It doesn't make any sense to me to bring wild chinchillas into a current pelt breeding program. It would be a giant leap backwards from what the last 100 years of selective breeding has done for domestic chinchilla pelt value.

Anyone wanting to mass produce matched lots at maximum value should not want to introduce genetic variability, least of all that from the wild population.

Leave the wild ones where they are!