The Chinese Giant Salamander Is Facing Extinction - The Atlantic
▻https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/how-a-pyramid-scheme-doomed-the-worlds-largest-amphibians/560786
immigrants from the south, arriving in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, had no such compunctions. They harvested the salamander in huge numbers, often using toxic insecticides to immobilize the creature. And when natural populations plummeted, they started farming it, for use in soups, stews, and several other dishes. There’s even a salamander jelly.
From 2004 onward, the number of farms grew rapidly. The government encouraged them as a way of boosting the fortunes of otherwise poor rural areas. Official licenses were issued, but many farms ran illicitly. By 2011, they held around 2.6 million salamanders between them. In some counties, salamander farming became the main industry.
Bizarrely, only 3 percent of the animals raised by the farms are eventually sold to restaurants. The rest are sold to more start-up farms. This absurd amphibian Ponzi scheme so inflated the worth of the salamanders that a small, 2-kilogram individual could sell for around $1,500. As a result, people began supplementing the farmed stock by illegally collecting the animals from the wild.