02/5/12

Good news for endangered California frogs

We were happy to learn that a few days ago the California Fish and Game Commission voted unanimously to designate two species of native yellow legged frogs inhabiting high-elevation lakes in the Sierra Nevada and Southern California mountain ranges as threatened and endangered species under the state’s Endangered Species Act. The commission acted after the Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition outlining the decline.

photo courtesy National Park Service. Department of the Interior

According to the Center, the population of Sierra Yellow legged frogs has decreased by 75% in recent decades. Reading about these frogs, we were struck by how they are a symbol of the challenges that frogs face worldwide. But they aren’t facing one challenge—they seem to be facing almost all of them:

Introduction of nonnative species: Stocking of nonnative trout in high-elevation Sierra lakes has been the main cause of the species’ decline. The trout eat tadpoles and juvenile frogs and alter the food web of the aquatic ecosystems on which the native frogs depend. The Department is recommending no trout stocking in the state without a fish management plan, and no further stocking of trout in areas that would conflict with protecting yellow-legged frogs.

Pesticides: Recent research has linked pesticides that drift from agricultural areas in the Central Valley to declines of native amphibians in the Sierra Nevada. Pesticides and other pollutants can directly kill frogs and also act as environmental stressors that render amphibians more susceptible to diseases, including a chytrid fungus that has recently ravaged many yellow-legged frog populations.

Loss and degradation of habitat: Grazing, logging, water diversions, off-road vehicles and recreational activity are allowed in frog habitat.

Climate change: Climate change has brought warmer temperatures, decreases in runoff, shifts in winter precipitation in the Sierra from snow to rain, and habitat changes that are rendering frog populations more vulnerable to drought-related extinction events.

A recent settlement agreement with the Center for Biological Diversity, which will also speed protection decisions for 756 other species, requires the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2013 to make a decision about whether to add the Sierra frog to the federal endangered list.

See the Center for Biological Diversity for more information about these frogs and about the other endangered species they are working to protect.

04/26/11

Why Frogs "Belong" in Hawaii – Guest Post by Sydney Ross Singer

One of our first posts at Frogs Are Green was about the coqui, a frog native to Puerto Rico, where it exists alongside several other species of Eleutherodactylus frogs and where a biological balance is maintained. It was introduced to Hawaii in the mid- to late 1990s and has no competitors so it has spread unchecked and is considered an invasive species. But our guest author, Sydney Ross Singer,  a medical anthropologist, biologist, and author living on the Big Island of Hawaii, would like us to look at this problem from a new perspective. Perhaps this “alien” species should not be rejected and destroyed but welcomed.

April 29, 2011, is International Save the Frogs Day.

Why save the frogs?

Besides being beautiful, fascinating, a source of medicinal substances, and essential for healthy ecosystem function, frogs are canaries in the environmental coal mine. They are sensitive to pollution and climate change. And their numbers are declining at extinction rates.

That’s bad news for the rest of us living in the coal mine. Clearly, we need to change our ways.
But change is difficult for a culture to accept. Until people are dying at the rate of frogs, nothing will alter our bad cultural behaviors.

So the next best thing to do is try saving the frogs. We may not be able to stop pesticide and herbicide use, or end the deforestation and development of wild areas, or stop all the industries and lifestyles that contribute to climate change. But we can catch frogs where they are declining and find new, healthier places for them to live.

We might not have the political and economic clout to stop multinational corporations from exploiting and altering the world’s environments. But we can help refugee species flee the destruction and avoid extinction.

There are places on the planet that can serve as sanctuaries for these refugees. One place, in particular, stands out as one of the best – Hawaii.

If you move frogs from one place to another that already has frogs, the immigrants will compete with the natives, and you can possibly lose native frog populations. Hawaii, however, has no native frogs, or any native reptiles, amphibians, land snakes, or lizards. What better place to introduce frogs? Lots of insect pests to eat, warm and humid conditions, and few predators. If we wanted a sanctuary for endangered and threatened frogs, this is the place.

But wait. Can we just move a species from one part of the planet to another? Won’t it become invasive and cause damage?

It is this question that is keeping frogs from finding new homes. According to current trends in environmental thinking, species “belong” where they are “native.” You’re not supposed to move them to places where they “don’t belong.” When it comes to frogs, the Hawaii government has said they clearly “don’t belong.”

Of course, there are already frogs and toads in Hawaii, which were brought by environmental managers for insect control decades ago. Back then species were introduced deliberately to enhance biodiversity and provide needed environmental services, such as pest control, or to serve as a food source. The environment was seen as a garden for us to plant and inhabit as we saw fit.

That has all changed. Now the goal of managers is to kill introduced species in order to preserve and restore native ecosystems as they had existed prior to western contact centuries ago. They won’t get rid of the people, or the agriculture, or the chemical spraying, or the bulldozing, or the deforestation, or the development, or the intercontinental shipping, or the industries and energy policies that help cause climate change. It’s hard to change these aspects of the culture. But you sure can kill things that “don’t belong.”

What was called “exotic” or “immigrant” is now called “alien” or “invasive.” We have gone from an open immigration policy to a bio-xenophobia.

When coqui tree frogs accidentally arrived in Hawaii with shipments of plants from Florida or Puerto Rico, the response was ballistic. The mayor of Hawaii declared a state of emergency. Scientists feared the sky was falling, and that the coquis, which eat lots of insects, would decimate the insect population to the point of starving all other insectivorous creatures. The sound of the frogs, a two-toned “ko-KEE”, was described as a “shrill shriek” guaranteed to keep everyone awake at night, run down property values, and drive away tourists.

Ironically, this same coqui frog is the national animal of Puerto Rico, its native land. In fact, Puerto Ricans love this frog and its chirping sound so much that it is honored in local folklore. People describe the nighttime sound of the coqui as soothing and necessary for sleep, and Puerto Rican travelers often bring recordings of coquis with them when away from home to help them sleep.

Puerto Rico has numerous species of coqui frogs, many of which are now extinct or threatened. Unfortunately, frog numbers are declining because of fungal infections, development, climate change, and pesticide and herbicide use. So you can imagine how angry and upset Puerto Ricans were when Hawaii announced its Frog War to eradicate the newly arrived coquis.

Over the past 10 years, millions of dollars have been spent in Hawaii trying to kill coquis. And despite wide cost-saving cuts in government spending, there is still money to kill coquis.

At first, they tried an experiment to kill coquis with concentrated caffeine, giving the frogs a heart attack. A special emergency exemption was needed from the EPA to allow this spraying of caffeine into the environment. It’s impact on humans, pets, plants, lizards, and other non-target species was unknown, or what it would do once it entered the groundwater and flowed to the oceans. Chemical warfare suits were needed by applicators to prevent exposure to the highly dangerous caffeine, which was at concentrations 100 times that of coffee. There is no antidote for caffeine poisoning.

When the caffeine experiment proved untenable and too dangerous, citric acid was encouraged as a frogicide. Sprayers soaked the forests with acid, sometimes sprayed from helicopters, to drench the tiny frogs and burn them to death. Of course, this also killed plants and other critters, such as lizards. But since lizards are non-native, nobody in the government cared.

But citric acid is expensive. So another experiment was tried, using hydrated lime to burn the frogs. This caustic chemical can also cause irreversible eye and lung damage to people and pets on contact, so another emergency exemption was needed from the EPA to experiment with it. As it turned out, the hydrated lime didn’t work very well, and it killed lots of plants.

So the University of Hawaii experimented on developing a frog disease to unleash on the frogs. They tried a fungus to infect the frogs, the same one killing frogs elsewhere in the world. They realized the fungus might also kill the geckos, skinks, anoles, and other lizards, as well as the toads. But since none are native to Hawaii, none of the eradicators cared. In fact, destroying all the lizards and toads would be considered a plus. The coqui frogs, however, survived the fungus, so it was never released wide scale.

By now you may wonder how people can get away with this abuse of frogs. Aren’t there laws protecting animals from this type of cruelty?

There are. So to get around the laws the Hawaii legislature passed a law defining the coqui as a “pest.” Pest species are exempted from humane laws.

This moral depravity reached its zenith in 2007, with a planned Coqui Bounty Hunter contest to be held by public schools on the Big Island. Schools instructed students to kill coquis, either by burning them with acid, cooking them alive, or freezing them. The school with the most “kills” would receive a prize — the violent video games Playstation 3 and Xbox. The contest was canceled once it was pointed out to the schools that students are supposed to receive humane, not inhumane, education.

Despite the eradication attempts, the frogs spread. Actually, sometimes they spread because of these attempts, since coquis try leaving areas disturbed by spraying. An interisland quarantine on the coqui still exists, requiring all plant nurseries to treat plants with hot water, proven lethal to coquis and their eggs, prior to transport to other islands. But the coquis seem to frequently survive that, too.

So here is the irony. Frogs are disappearing from everywhere in the world except in Hawaii, where the government is trying to make them disappear.

Yet, despite the endless anti-coqui propaganda, people are coming to like the little coqui frog, especially those people who have arrived to Hawaii since the advent of the coqui. To these people, the sound of Hawaii includes the coqui. To these new human immigrants, the coqui is normal, and enjoyable. They understand why the Puerto Ricans love these frogs.

If we are to save the world’s endangered and threatened frogs, and other wildlife that needs rescue from the human-damaged world, we need to change our environmental immigration policy. It doesn’t matter where a species is native, or where it “belongs”. That these species survive is what matters. And this may require finding them a new home.

This is not to suggest that we bring in species willy nilly, without thinking about the impact on local species. We need careful study to know which species can be introduced, and where. But unless we open our borders, and our hearts, to these refugee species, they will die.

We caused their problems. Their fate is in our hands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Sydney Ross Singer
is a medical anthropologist, biologist, and author living on the Big Island of Hawaii. He is an outspoken defender of the Hawaiian coqui frog, has created Hawaii’s first coqui frog sanctuary, and has been featured on Animal Planet, PBS Nature, BBC radio, and Univision. He is co-author of Panic in Paradise: Invasive Species, Hysteria, and the Hawaiian Coqui Frog War (ISCD Press, 2005). His website is www.HawaiianCoqui.org.

12/1/10

Become a Frog Listener and Help Save Your State's Frogs

In many parts of the country, frogs and toads have begun their hibernation, and we humans, too, are hibernating for the winter—at least in parts of the northern hemisphere. This is a good time, however, to hone your frog listening skills and to think about volunteering as a frog listener for the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program, (NAAMP) a nationwide program of the U.S. Geological Survey that studies the distribution and relative abundance of amphibians in North America. The data collected from frog listeners across the country is analyzed for patterns of amphibian stability or decline on local, regional, and national levels.

Several states are participating in this study. Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources, for example, has participated in NAAMP, since 2008. In Georgia as elsewhere, frogs serve as indicators of environmental change: the data collected by volunteers helps monitor habitat change or loss of wetlands.

In Georgia, volunteers are asked to drive a predetermined route (or routes), stopping for five minutes to listen for and report frog species and their relative abundance at 10 established wetland stops. They visit these local listening routes three times a year.

Frog listening not only helps frogs, it helps the participants, too. Listening to the frog calls, according to Sarah Barlow, a NAAMP participant, is not only relaxing and enjoyable, it also builds “a greater appreciation of being in the woods.” (Quoted in an online article Frog Listener Volunteers Answer Call To Help Survey Frogs Across Georgia.)

Before becoming a frog listener, you must first take the U.S. Geological Survey quiz and be able to idenfity 65 percent of the frogs in your state. Even if you don’t want to become a frog listener, it’s fun to take the quiz to test your knowledge of the calls of frogs in your state.

So in addition to holiday music, why not plan to listen to some other choruses—frog choruses—in preparation for spring. If you live in Georgia, you don’t have to wait that long. The first listening window next year opens January 15.

Here’s one frog from Georgia with a distinctive call, the Green Frog (Rana clamitans)

09/30/10

Deformed Frogs Found in New Mexico Pond

According to the KOAT-TV blog (Albuquerque, NM), residents of Los Lunas, New Mexico, are concerned about  dead and deformed frogs found in a pond in a park just a few feet from their homes.

A  frog with two extra legs

As quoted in the report, a resident, who wants to remain anonymous, said the discovery has been a huge concern around the neighborhood for weeks. “We saw several today, probably five or six, maybe ten that were just dead around the pond.”

A local resident took pictures of the deformed frogs after her kids caught several from the pond. In the photos, some of the frogs have no back legs at all, while others have too many legs.

Michael Jaramillo, director of Parks and Recreation for Los Lunas, investigated these reports and found two dead and deformed frogs almost instantly. He suspects that weed killer or chemicals used to treat the algae may be hurting the amphibians. The city of Los Lunas has closed the park and has stretched a yellow caution tape around the entire pond, and experts will soon test the water.

Mason Ryan, an amphibian expert at the University of New Mexico, said in a related article that  frogs can be good indicators of what’s wrong in the environment. He doesn’t know what’s specifically happening at the New Mexico park, but the frogs could help tell the story.

“It could indicate that something is out of whack — a potential parasite population has increased too much, a potential predator or disease or chemical contaminant.”

State environmental officials plan to contact the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and to test the water for contaminants.

More information:

Dead, Deformed Frogs Found in Pond, KOAT, Albuquerque

State Official Investigate Deformed Frogs