09/27/10

U.S. Agency Proposes Legislation to Help Stem Spread of Chytrid Fungus

In an effort to stem the spread of the deadly chytrid fungus that is wiping out amphibian populations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is considering banning the importation of amphibians and their eggs without a permit certifying the animals are disease-free. The chytrid fungus has caused the extinction of at least 200 amphibian species and continues to be one of the greatest threats to amphibians.

Northern Leopard Frog, a North American native species

In a statement, Rowan Gould, Acting Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said,

The worldwide decline of amphibians is of great concern to us. Chytrid is attributed as a major cause of this amphibian mortality. We understand that halting the spread of the fungus or eradicating it will take more than just regulating importation and transportation of infected amphibians, but it is a major step in the right direction.

According the the FWS website, under the Lacey Act, the Department of the Interior is authorized to regulate the importation and interstate transport of wildlife species determined to be injurious to the welfare and survival of native wildlife. Current regulations prohibit the release into the wild of all species of live amphibians or their eggs, except as authorized. But, of course, this law isn’t easily enforced. Many pet frogs are let “free” in local ponds, potentially infecting native species.

A listing under the Lacey Act would not affect a person or institution that currently owns an amphibian and does not transport it to another state or U.S. territory.

At FROGS ARE GREEN, we applaud this proposed legislation and feel it would be a huge step toward controlling the spread of the chytrid fungus that threatens the survival of so many amphibian species, including native species listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The FWS is seeking input from the public. You can leave a comment until December 16, 2010. Please take a few minutes to comment and to show your support for a measure that will genuinely help amphibians.

More information: Statement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Information from Save the Frogs about the frog legs trade and the spread of infectious diseases.

09/20/10

Creating a Nature-Friendly Garden or Backyard – Guest post, Marlene A. Condon

We’re so pleased that Marlene A. Condon offered to share her expertise about creating wildlife-friendly gardens and backyards. Marlene is a nature writer and photographer with a passion for creating wildlife habitat around homes. A field editor for Birds & Blooms since the magazine’s debut in 1995, she has been published in numerous newspapers and magazines and is the author of The Nature-Friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Wildlife, Plants, and People (Stackpole Books).

With fall upon us, the majority of gardeners are thinking about cleaning up the garden and putting it “to bed.” But this year, leave the garden alone. Numerous kinds of wildlife are getting ready for winter. Your hands-off attitude in autumn will benefit them and they will repay you next year when you begin a new gardening season.

Japanese Maple with its leaves raked around it to provide hibernation cover for numerous kinds of wildlife, including tree frogs.

The falling leaves that pile up along your garden fence create a haven where Gray Treefrogs and Spring Peepers can hibernate. Next spring, as temperatures rise and these two kinds of treefrogs awaken, they will climb up into your trees and shrubs to feed upon insects and spiders. Peepers, which usually stay within two to three feet from the ground, might also be found on your herbaceous (non-woody) plants. But no matter where they feed, these amphibians help to limit the populations of invertebrates to numbers that your plants can sustain without incurring serious harm.

Some species of spiders and insects are taking refuge within your dying and drying garden plants to try to survive the winter in an inactive adult state. Other species will soon perish, leaving behind eggs, larvae, or pupae on or within plants to carry on the line—if they survive the searching eyes of numerous predators still active in cold weather.

Praying Mantid egg mass on Purple Ruffled Basil. Dried plant stalks contain the eggs of numerous critters essential to the functioning of the garden.

Watch your garden throughout the winter and you will see birds, such as Downy Woodpeckers and Carolina Chickadees, clinging to and poking your brown plants. They are looking for the tiny insects and spiders, in whatever form, that provide our avian creatures with the fat and protein they require to survive the harshest time of the year.

American Goldfinches feeding in winter on Purple Ruffled Basil seeds.

If there are plants and food aplenty during the winter for them, birds that are permanent residents of the area may want to build nests next spring in your yard. As winter comes to an end, you simply need to cut up the old plant stalks a bit and let them lie where they fall. Many kinds of birds, such as Carolina Wrens, need such old stems, along with those dried leaves that sheltered the treefrogs, to construct their nests.

Carolina Wren chicks leaving nest made of plant debris.

The dried plant material that the birds don’t take will be recycled into the soil for the benefit of your growing plants. As snails and slugs become active, they will be delighted to find their favorite food (decaying plant and animal matter) waiting for them to feed upon. When these unusual organisms are provided with such a fine smorgasbord, they don’t bother your growing plants. Instead, they help to fertilize them—which is exactly what their function in your garden is supposed to be.

Snails feeding on plant debris and sickly plant that need to be recycled.

In other words, when you allow natural processes to occur as they are meant to happen, you don’t bring about the problems that most gardeners assume they are destined to encounter. As numerous kinds of wildlife go about their everyday activities in your yard, they limit populations of other kinds of wildlife, thus eliminating overpopulations that are usually the sources of people’s gardening difficulties.

By creating a nature-friendly garden, you save money, time, and effort by not needing chemical pesticides. By avoiding the use of pesticides, you don’t interfere with “Mother Nature’s” system of checks and balances that exists to keep the environment functioning properly.

You also don’t inadvertently harm wildlife that is not injurious to your plants. Any insects or spiders poisoned by pesticides are easy prey for all of the other kinds of animals that feed upon them which means those critters can be poisoned as well. And plants sprayed with herbicides pose an extreme danger to our helpful insect-eating amphibians, such as salamanders and toads, which have very absorbent skin.

Therefore, to avoid garden problems, help wildlife to survive in your yard. You’ll get to enjoy the lovely songs and beauty of birds, the sights and sounds of numerous kinds of wildlife, and a more relaxed and thus more satisfying manner of gardening.

Please visit Marlene’s website to learn more about her information- and photo-packed book.

All photographs copyright Marlene A. Condon

09/13/10

Text "FROG" and Help Save a Frog Today

Below is a re-post from the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation project about their newly launched Text-Frog campaign to raise 50 K for their amphibian rescue program. We hope you will consider helping this worthwhile amphibian conservation effort by donating $5 via cell phone. See below for details.

YOU can help frogs!

The price we pay every time we lose a frog species to chytrid is too great to measure. The cost of saving frogs, however, is scant in comparison. But we need your help! That’s why we’ve launched a mobile giving campaign, providing an easy and convenient tool for you to help us battle chytrid and give the frogs a safe haven. Just pull out your cell phone and text “FROG” to 20222 to make a $5 donation to the rescue project.

Every $5 that comes in this way will go toward our new goal of raising the $50,000 it takes to turn a shipping container into a rescue pod. These rescue pods are biosecure “arks” where we can care for frogs that would otherwise be hit hard by the wave of chytrid. Without this ark, we won’t have a safe place to keep the frogs—so help us raise the funds by spreading the word!

So what will your money buy? Check it out:

$5: Three swab sticks used to test frogs for chytrid.
$5: A box of gloves to help ensure the cleanest and safest handling of the frogs.
$5: Pair of Crocs for keepers and visitors to change into to prevent bringing anything harmful into the biosecure rescue pods and areas where the frogs are kept.
$5: Small cricket container—caring for the frogs’ food is an important part of caring for the frogs.
$10: Four gallons of bleach, to keep the floor of the pod and quarantine rooms sterile.
$10: Large cricket container.
$10: Frog quarantine tank.
$15: Tub of yeast to feed fruit flies, which in turn are fed to the frogs.
$20: Calcium powder for frogs to keep them strong and healthy.
$20: Paper towel pack to help clean the tanks.
$30: 100 pounds of tilapia (fish food) to feed the crickets.
$30: Standard frog tank.
$150: Bottle of anti-fungal medication to treat the animals for chytrid.

Watch as our rescue pod fills up with frogs by following the progress of our $50K for Frogs campaign. And make sure to text “FROG” to 20222* to save a frog today! (You can text “FROG” to 20222 up to six times.)

*A one-time donation of $5 will be added to your mobile phone bill or deducted from your prepaid balance. Messaging & Data Rates May Apply. All charges are billed by and payable to your mobile service provider. Service is available on most carriers. Donations are collected for the benefit of the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project by the Mobile Giving Foundation and subject to the terms found at www.hmgf.org/t. You can unsubscribe at any time by replying STOP to short code 20222; Reply HELP to 20222 for help. You can also find the privacy policy here.

06/20/10

Teach Your Children Well (about nature): Father's Day Thoughts

A couple of months ago, we received a lovely email from a reader named Marty who lives in in Eastern Pennsylvania (Lehigh County) one hour south of the Pocono Mountains. Here’s part of the email:

What’s the best thing I can do as a Dad to teach my children to preserve these treasures [frogs and salamanders] that are so dear to me. My grandfather taught me the love of wild places and I want to pass that on to them.

I wish more dads were thinking about how they could introduce nature to kids. My sons are in their twenties and still love learning about wildlife and animals. I think most of this love of nature came from their father. So I’m offering a few suggestions. But we’d like to open this up to readers of Frogs Are Green and get your ideas also. How did your father encourage your love of nature? What are you doing as a dad to instill a love of nature in your kids.

photo by Mary Jo Rhodes

Here are some ideas:

• take them on short hikes or walks into the woods, starting when they are very young. (Here is a list of state parks). Young children need no encouragement to love nature—everything around them is still magical and interesting (bugs, stones, flowers). The key is to keep taking them on walks in the woods throughout their childhood, even when they start saying it’s boring (the preteen years). You might have to add other incentives during the rougher times (a trip to an ice cream store afterwards or some other treat).

• Your child might start to like one animal and that may become their animal. Encourage this by buying books about the animal, plush toys, trips to see the animal in the wild (whale watching trips, for example), or in zoos or aquariums. You can adopt various wild animals for $25 or so, and this will give your child a personal connection to the animal (we adopted a whale when our sons were young).

• Plan family vacations around national parks rather than amusement parks. We’ve visited a number of national parks over the years. These are fun because the trails through them are easy and well worn, there’s a certain familiarity to them (the park rangers, the gift shops, etc), and the scenery is spectacular. You can buy a passport for your child and have it stamped in each national park you go to.

• Share you enthusiasm about nature, but don’t be too heavy handed about it. If kids feel you are always teaching them, they might get turned off. Instead, share your sense of wonder. Point out a cardinal (look at that red bird!), but don’t turn it into a lesson about birds.

• The National Wildlife Federation has ideas about enjoying nature with children, including setting up a tent in your backyard and sleeping outside. I did this a few times as a kid in my suburban backyard (without the tent), and loved it. If you’re lucky enough to live in a place far from cities, you can stargaze with your children, pointing out a few constellations.

• as far as our amphibians friends….the best places that we’ve found to see them are state parks. Unlike Marty, we live in an urban area and it’s tough to find amphibians in a region where all the land has been developed. But state parks and wildlife refuges that have been left untouched, with ponds and swamps, are great places to see them. Tell your kids to look out for frogs, toads, and salamanders. Kids are closer to the ground and have sharper eyes and will most likely see them before you do. You can also build a frog pond in your backyard.

Dads: Please send along your ideas as well for introducing children to nature! Happy Father’s Day!

04/22/10

Happy Earth Day!

We are happy to announce the winner of our first FROGS ARE GREEN Earth Day contest, in which we asked people to send in ideas about how to help the environment, using the following words as inspiration: renew, rebuild, reconnect, or rethink. We received lots of great ideas and it was tough picking a winner, but without further ado, the winner is:

Dee Dee DisBennett

Her winning entry is a way to reuse dump truck tires as raised beds to grow tomatoes:

I was stressing over a pile of dump truck tires and a pile of broken up concrete, rock, and brick that had been in the yard for years. Hauling this stuff to the landfill really wasn’t the problem. What it was going to cost me to dump it was my concern. Well, in my household, I’ve convinced my family that it is against the law to not recycle (hee hee). My 13 year old was trying to think of ideas for these tires – tire swing, shred for playground, boat bumpers at lake, etc. Unfortunately, these tires have steel in them, so their re-use is limited. Placing this on the back burner and moving on to the creation of our 1st garden, the idea hit us like a ton of bricks to use the tires in the garden. We drilled a hole, then jig sawed the sidewalls out of the tires, placed them against the hill, filled them with potting soil and carolina clay and planted tomatos in them. We placed the broken concrete and rocks on the hill behind the tires.

We liked this idea because tire disposal is a huge environmental problem. Landfills won’t accept them and so using one as a raised bed seemed like a great idea to us!

Sample tire planters

We got lots of other great ideas. Honorable mention goes to the following people:

Katie Matz suggests that teachers use both sides of the paper before recycling so that the paper filling up recycling bins would be used completely. She also suggested that teachers send assignments and receive homework via email to save paper. As she says, “Less paper equals more trees, more trees equals more wild life living in rainforests, including those cute and slimy frogs.” We agree!

Lisa Crain-Butler: Lisa suggested ideas for celebrating her daughter’s Earth Day birthday (happy birthday, Madalie!), including planting a tree, giving her a set of gardening tools, and creating a birthday garden. She also has great ideas for reusing cans and other materials.

Kristine Garcia: Kristine’s idea is to skip the mall and go to a park instead and make it fun by creating nature scavenger hunts. We all definitely need to spend less time in the mall and more time outside so this is a great idea!

Alka Mehta suggests creating an environmental club to build a pond for frogs, educate people about not using chemicals in their school, workplace, or home, and performing a play or making a video about environmental topics. (Maybe a FROGS ARE GREEN club!)

Trish Szymanski suggests forming neighborhood associations to remove those items that can’t be left curbside for recycling. This is a big problem in cities. I have a whole basement full of this type of material.

Linda Labowitz suggests saving lids from plastic bottles and using them for drainage at the bottom of flower containers. Mix compost and potting soil to put on the top of plastic lids. I’m going to try this with my garden plants.

Nancy Rielle suggest reducing paper waste by sending paperless e-cards. She points out that 7 billion paper cards are sold annually in the U.S. That’s a lot of paper!

Robin Rhodes suggests spending more time in the natural world. Say good morning to trees and plants, talk to the birds, pray with the wind. As she says, relationship is one way to increase your connection and commitment to nature.

Our ideas:

Mary Jo’s idea: I have an old-fashioned idea. Buy or make a bird bath and put it in your backyard. Our grandparents often had bird baths, yet so few people seem to have them now (at least around where I live). I love watching birds splash and drink in the bird baths in my backyards. Birds need water (and other creatures, like bees, do too). It’s such a simple way to reconnect with nature. Just be sure to pour fresh water in every day and clean out your bird bath every couple of weeks. Perhaps tires could be reused as bird baths!

Susan’s ideas:
1- How about reusing the sleeve from your coffee cup? Each time you go to Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, take the sleeve off the cup before you trash it and reuse it on the next cup. Perhaps we can convince these coffee bars to start a recycle bin for the sleeves.

2- How about picking one item each month from your household products and replacing it with a “green” version? I have done this with my dishwashing liquid, surface spray cleaner, etc…

1- How about reusing the sleeve from your coffee cup? Each time you go to “Starbucks” or “Dunkin Donuts” take the sleeve off the cup before you trash it and reuse it on the next cup. Perhaps we can convince these coffee bars to start a recycle bin for the sleeves.

2- How about picking one item each month from your household products and replacing it with a “green” version? I have done this with my dishwashing liquid, surface spray cleaner, etc…

We would like to send to honorable mentions a few of our postcards of a red-eyed tree frog and a wristband. If you’re interested, please send your address to us.

Even if you didn’t enter the contest, we’d love to receive your ideas. Feel free to suggest some more ways to renew, reuse, reconnect, rethink, rebuild or recycle in the comments section.

And be sure to go outside today and enjoy nature—wherever you live!

04/7/10

Vernal Pools: Woodland Nurseries for Frogs and Salamanders

This past weekend, I went hiking with my family in Harriman State Park in New York. We’ve had a very wet spring—well, actually it sometimes seems as if we’ve been living in a rainforest. It’s possible that all this rain will means lots of frogs and toads this summer.

While hiking we found a swamp and listened to a wonderful chorus of spring peepers and (we think) Eastern American toads.

My son Jeremy listening to a chorus of spring peers, Surebridge Swamp, Harriman State Park, New York

My son Jeremy listening to a chorus of spring peepers, Surebridge Swamp, Harriman State Park, New York

We also saw lots of vernal pools, bodies of water that appear in the spring and last from two to three months before they dry up in the summer. Some types of amphibians, crustaceans, and other wildlife need these pools for breeding, hatching eggs, or as a nursery while they are young. Because they are temporary, vernal pools do not contain fish (which eat tadpoles and larvae).

When you hike by vernal pools, they don’t look like much. In fact, my sneakers got soaked as I tried to jump over one. Yet they are of critical importance to wildlife. I’ve noticed, however, a lot of comments on environmental blogs that read something like this, “Only treehuggers would want to save these mud puddles!” Yet wood frogs, some species of salamander, and fairy shrimp need these “mud puddles” in order to survive. Every year hundreds of acres of wetlands are lost (usually forever) to commercial or residential development. According to the Ohio Vernal Pool Partnership

These usually small, but very dynamic wetlands fill with water, blossom with life and host a cacophony of sounds and a plethora of life forms every spring, only to disappear into the forest floor every autumn…. A vernal pool is a place where a good naturalist can weave many fascinating stories about the amazing life forms, adaptations, and life histories of its inhabitants, and demonstrate it by a single swoop of a dip net! Vernal pool is a miniature, fascinatingly complex and fragile world, with all of its drama played out every year close to our homes, and yet most of us have never witnessed it. [Ohio Vernal Pool Partnership].

: Salamanders and woodfrogs migrate from their wintering sites to vernal pools for breeding when the conditions are right, courtesy of The Vernal Pool Association