I don’t know if it’s a stupid question but there’s something I’ve always wondered about. I know the whole taboo about obt’s being released into the wild and all that.

What I want to know is if other species are also a threat to our native spiders? Wouldn’t it be catastrophic if thousands of vagans for example were released? Why exactly are obt’s focused on so badly?

Who said obt's are focused on so badly?
P.murinus are illegal because of illegal collecting of South African genera like Pterinochilus and Ceratogyrus, not because of a threat of being released.
Other species and genera are generally not considered a threat as they are found on different continents or different habitats or climatic conditions, but they could very well be just as big a threat.

The thing is, even if you catch a few local species on a farm somewhere and you take them home and experiment with breeding, releasing the slings back into the wild could be a serious problem too. There is only so much habitat, food etc for all the different creatures living in an area, and you might seriously upset the existing balance.

So local or foreign, releasing thousands of spiders into any area could prove to be a disaster to that area and may perhaps even ripple into other areas.

As Ceratogyrus said, P murinus (OBT) is not specifically targeted but it's VERY similar to our local P lugardi and could probably survive and compete in our climate which poses quite a risk! There might be other species that could survive here and in the near future there could be something done about those species as well....

Thank you, that answers my question.

Taki wrote: ...our local P lugardi

We have a local P.lugardi? Since when?