Frog Matters

Great news from New Zealand on the discovery of an eye ointment that removes chytrid fungus from otherwise doomed amphibians. It looks like chloramphenicol, an antibiotic ointment for human eyes, will be added to the medicine cabinets wherever Amphibian Ark places a captive breeding program. The word “cure” was used in some news reports about this ointment, but you can’t cure them and you can’t save them unless you have them in a biosecure facility, which is what the Ark will coordinate. Also read one story that mentioned Amphibian Ark will cost $400 million. The price is actually $50-$60 million — or less than twice what Saw 4 sold in tickets last weekend.  Very achievable, considering that 2008 will be The Year of The Frog.

There is a video link on this story from the Beaumont Enterprise that takes you to a late October public presentation by Jeff Corwin of Animal Planet and CNN Planet in Peril fame (in which he shares host duties with Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. In this video, he co-stars with a rococo toad (the world’s largest toad species) to get people thinking in a new way about amphibians and other threatened wildlife. 

Check out this Toledo Blade story about the Toledo Zoo’s plans for a biosecure facility to provide safe harbor for disappearing salamanders and other amphibians. Here’s a telling quote from R. Andrew Odum, the zoo’s herpetology curator: “Researchers are going back to areas [that had] enormous numbers of salamanders, and they’re gone completely.” 

This is the kind of initiative that needs to happen around the world, and Amphibian Ark  with 2008: The Year of the Frog will be the catalyst.

About half of 11-17 year olds in the UK are worried about climate change, according to a recent survey by the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. A news report deemed this a surprisingly low percentage. Actually, that a lot of worried kids. But the biggest finding, to me, was that only 12 percent of the UK kids feel they’re capable of making an impact on the problem by changing how they live, consume, act. Look at it this way:  for every 50 kids who truly are alarmed by the future of the planet, 12 feel they can do something about it, while 38 see the problem and feel powerless.

Right now, there’s a lot of discussion about how to make more kids aware of global warming. That will grow the branches, but not the roots. The roots are the kids who know what to do about the problems they’re seeing. These kids are key to sustainable change.

You can surf the net and find signs of healthy roots in stories about kids who led volunteer cleanup projects. But what can be the tipping point that doubles or triples the “12″ mentioned earlier? 

• It can include involving teens in a “quick win” on the environmental and biodiversity fronts. The best one I know of is Amphibian Ark, which in a few years, with the right help, can claim victory in averting the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaur. For every $100,000 raised, a threatened species is placed on the Ark — and saved.
• It can be a Google or Viacom, among others, using its information/entertainment power to tell stories of empowered kids to the rest of the teen nation.
• It has to include local organizations, like zoos and conservations groups, that set the table with creative, educational programs and activities for youth.

But those with the greatest influence are going to be those on the frontline — parents and teachers.

Chilling news in today’s Global Environment Outlook announcement by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).  The sweeping report includes comment on the state of biodiversity. Unfortunately, amphibians once again are documented to be worst off. Excerpt from the UNEP Web site:

“Current biodiversity changes are the fastest in human history. Species are becoming extinct a hundred times faster than the rate shown in the fossil record. The Congo Basin’s bushmeat trade is thought to be six times the sustainable rate. Of the major vertebrate groups that have been assessed comprehensively, over 30 per cent of amphibians, 23 per cent of mammals and 12 per cent of birds are threatened.”

(Note: I wrote this post months ago before the writers’ strike temporarily closed Dunder Mifflin. Funny to see so many of you coming to this page in the week leading up to The Office’s return. I understand. I can’t wait, either! Put your anticipation to work by heeding the plea below. And, just so you know, Froggy 101 hasn’t adopted this cause yet.)

Tonight is “The Office” night in my house. In the show, Dwight Shrute (whom I channeled in an earlier post which opined that a frog is superior to a feral cat on a beet farm) often sits next to a filing cabinet that bears the sticker of a real, Scranton radio station, Froggy 101. I emailed the station and asked them to become the flagship radio station for Amphibian Ark. That pairing seems predestined. Granted, NPR would have been a smarter choice, but they don’t do that sort of thing. And, humor can be very effective in getting people on board a new idea, like saving amphibians. I have not heard back from Froggy 101. Please encourage Froggy 101 to do the right thing, and get behind the fight to save endangered amphibians. Click here for the contact page on their Web site.  We’ll see what develops… 

If you read this blog, you know about the massive campaign by Amphibian Ark to place hundreds of amphibian species in biosecure facilities for captive breeding … before chytrid fungus, pollution, global warming, and habitat loss wipe them out. The global conservation community has declared 2008 ”The Year of the Frog” to bring attention to the crisis.  This article from the University of Manchester (UK) talks about scientists trying to figure out what an individual species should be fed once contained.  In this case, it’s the leaf frog Cruziohyla calcarifer which lives in the rainforest canopy of Costa Rica.

New Zealand’s been on top of the amphibian crisis for a number of years — protecting its seven frog species — and this week provides a prologue for next year’s The Year of The Frog.  New Zealand Frog Week runs Oct. 21-27.

Good summary of New Zealand frog situation in this article from a very good Web site maintained by the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.  An excerpt:

“There are four species of native frogs and three species of introduced frogs in New Zealand. We really do not know how well New Zealand’s frogs are coping amid the many reports of global amphibian declines, but we have seen a dramatic decline in Archey’s frog over the last few years.  Although chytrid fungus has been identified in introduced frogs, its role in any of the declines of native frogs in our country, has yet to be determined. The conservation status of Archey’s frog and Hamilton’s frog are classified as Nationally Critical – the same level of protection as the kakapo.”

The Amphibian Network of South Asia and Zoo Outreach Organisation (Z.O.O) continue to build awareness in India about the crisis and Amphibian Ark in this nice article on the amphibian crisis …and this one, too.

Got succinct bit of perspective from Kevin Zippel regarding some worries that captive breeding may render species unable to survive when returned to the wild: “After innumerable generations of captive breeding, the domestic pig, goat, rabbit, and cat do not seem to have any problems successfully repatriating to the wild the world over.” Here’s the original post about the captive breeding debate.