Massive effort needed to save the frogs worldwide in 2008 - Year of the Frog

by Federsavage | January 10, 2008 at 06:08 pm | 544 views | add comment

Amphibians can be a "toady" subject to a lot of people. A person who is a ‘toady’ grovels to please others. It is considered an insult. But, toads actually are frogs. The toads just have stubbier bodies,
shorter hind legs, and warty, dry skin.

Toads are like the ugly sisters
of the amphibian family. They suffer in comparison to their frog
siblings, who steal the family show with their lovely webbed feet,
their smooth skin, their prominent eyes, and their leaping legs. Among
humans, toads also have a less pleasant reputation than frogs. The
connotation of the word ‘toad’ is something sluggish and unattractive.”

Wetlands, the critical habitat for amphibians suffers the same indignation through many people. Amphibian Ark at www.amphibianark.org, is spearheading the effort to change people's "toady" ideas about amphibians and their contribution to ecological biodiversity. Sir David Attenborough (Planet Earth series) explains why in an excerpt an interview:

Excerpt of Sir David’s frog interview with BBC

Posted by pleasecroak under Chytrid fungus, Sir David Attenborough, Year of the Frog, captive breeding | Tags: Amphibian Ark, amphibians, biodiversity, chytrid, Sir David Attenborough |

Sir David Attenborough was interviewed about the amphibian crisis on BBC radio on Jan. 3. This is what he said:

“Frogs have been dying out, for some reason or another, over the last ten years, and for a long time… I mean, some of it’s to do with pesticide pollution, some of it’s to do with loss of habitat… but there has been a mysterious disease which we have now identified. It’s a kind of fungus. Frogs breathe through their skins, their moist skins, and this fungus grows on the skin and eventually clogs it and so the frogs die of suffocation. And at the moment there is no cure, and the disease is steadily spreading its way around the world.”

“There are some 5,000 species of frogs around the world. But they play an unobtrusive but very crucial part in the ecology of any region. Frogs, for example, feed on mosquito larvae. Mosquito larvae, at least some species of them, carry diseases. If there are no frogs eating the larvae, there could be a great increase in the number of mosquitoes around. Equally, there are reptiles and mammals – and birds, particularly – which live on frogs. If they don’t find food from the frogs, they too will become endangered. So once you lose a major element in an ecological system, the echoes, the consequences, are widespread and very, very difficult to predict.”

Interviewer: But if there is no cure for this fungus that is causing much of the problems, what can we do?

“Well, the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which are those responsible societies and organisations which are concerned about conservation, it’s quite easy, relatively easy for them to set up bio secure breeding areas. For example, you can get a normal container that ships use to transport goods, and you can convert that into a biologically secure environment in which you can take a population of frogs and preserve it and keep it biologically secure until we have sorted out how we can deal with this disease, and then we may be able to release them in the wild.”