STUDY SHOWS THAT FROG AND SNAKE SPECIES COST THE WORLD ECONOMY $16 BILLION.

According to a study published on Thursday, two invasive species, the American bullfrog and the brown tree snake, cost the world an estimated $16 billion between 1986 and 2020 by producing problems ranging from crop damage to power disruptions.

According to Scientific Reports, the brown-and-green frog lithobates catesbeianus, which can weigh more than 2 pounds (0.9 kilos), had the largest influence in Europe.

According to researcher Ismael Soto, the brown tree snake, or boiga irregularis, has proliferated uncontrollably on Pacific islands such as Guam and the Marianna Islands, where the species was introduced by US forces during World War II.

He claims that the snakes were once so numerous that they caused power outages by crawling on electrical equipment.This highlights the need of investing in regulating the global travel of invasive frog and snake species to avoid paying for mitigation after the invasions occur, according to Soto, the study’s principal researcher and a PhD student at the University of South Bohemia in the Czech Republic.

“These days, the pet trade is the main gateway for these species,” Soto told Reuters. “Especially now that everyone wants to have the most unusual snake.” “We recommend that the blacklist of prohibited species for commerce be updated on a regular basis.

“The figures were generated by collecting the expenses associated with invasive species as published in peer-reviewed literature or studies regarded to be of high reliability, and they were based primarily on estimations and extrapolations rather than empirical observations.