Hi Mitch,
Sorry about the slow response, been away from the computer for a few days and have only now had the chance to respond to your questions.
Speaking about Canegrass dragons here, there was never a lot of them in captivity in the first place, probably no more keepers 6 or 7 years ago than what there are now. The reason they appeared to be around in numbers is because there was a little bit of activity on this forum with a guy who had a group of them posting up pictures and talking about them. I think he has since moved out of the hobby, he is certainly not active on APS any more and hasn't been for several years. He had them for a short period of time before deciding to get rid of them. I actually bought them from him.
They are very short lived dragons, mine go 3-5 years with 4 being pretty usual and they produce small clutches of eggs. I have never had any more than 5, the usual number is 3 or 4. They are about the size of a small pea. As you can appreciate it is very easy to see a situation where at the end of a breeding season you could have 12 or 15 of these but during the course of the year you lose quite a few so that as the new season starts you could easily be left with only 5 or 6 to try and get your colony going again. This has happened to me three times over the last 7 years and I have even had a season or 2 where no breeding took place at all. The females only produce 2 or 3 clutches in a season if you are lucky and not every female will produce eggs every season so you never really end up with a big number of them.
A lot of people get into dragons, actually get some interesting species into their collections and then start to hit the wall with the usual problems you get when you are trying to keep dragons particularly small dragons in an artificial environment. For this reason you can add to your list, frustration, lack of the necessary time required to work with these dragons and money (the cost of actually acquiring and maintaining small dragons and the fact that most of the time you can never breed enough to sell on so you can at least offset some of the costs. There is no money in dragons unless you keep them outdoors and only those species you can find in your home range and then you will breed them regularly as Rick Walker does consistently every year.
Otherwise for those of us who keep their collections indoors, trying to provide the right husbandry can be sometimes very difficult. Most people who start out in dragons quickly realise this as their collection starts to grow and move on to other reptile families that are not so demanding in their husbandry requirements. Over the years I have seen several reasonably well known people move out of dragon keeping altogether because of all the things I have talked about and you have suggested as well in tandem. People just decide it is too hard or they couldn't be bothered or it is not worth the effort or whatever other reason and just move on to other animals that they have interests in.
I am planning to spend more time with this species in the next breeding season so hopefully I get a good number of youngsters that I can actually let some go. Just as a matter of interest, I got one infertile clutch this season and another clutch that went full term but lost 2 that did not actually leave the egg, so I ended up with 1 hatchling this season.
Speaking with Tyson Keen who I believe you know quite well I am told you have a strong interest in dragons so I would encourage you to continue to work with them. When you get things right and you see that little neonate come out of the egg from a species you are breeding for the first time, it is a truly gratifying feeling and for me makes all the frustrations, doubts and questions about why I keep dragons just disappear.
Mark Hawker