Frog Matters

From the people who brought you “Silence of the Bees”: PBS NATURE will croak about amphibian crisis in April: http://tinyurl.com/aejzkb
Here’s the news release about the April 5 special:

Thanks to the CoquiFrogNews blog , I learned that Jeff Corwin’s Animal Planet special on the amphibian crisis can be viewed in its entirety HERE. Mr. Corwin is right up there with Sir David Attenborough in raising awareness of the crisis, and he is a major supporter of Amphibian Ark.

We don’t know how North American crayfish hopped the pond, but scientists have announced that crayfish are proliferating in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Spain — and destroying salamanders and other amphibians in the process. Humans in Europe haven’t yet developed a taste for crayfish, so there is no natural predator of the invaders. Story here. This is ironic since in America we can’t get enough of crayfish, or crawfish, as we celebrate Mardi Gras.

Ingenious use of Google Earth to save amphibians in England. When it’s mating time for amphibians, they often cross highways by the hundreds to make their love connection. And they get run over by cars and trucks. It is contributing to the disappearance of species. Now, in England, concerned people can put special toad postings on Google Earth to show where the crossings typically happen. The group behind it is Froglife. Maybe motorists will take note and drive extra carefully in those areas. Hey, come to think of it, there’s no reason you can’t do the same in your town. Here’s the full story. And here’s link to see how it works. And here is a previous post about the road kill problem in Indiana.

And what’s this have to do with amphibians? Amphibian Ark? Biodiversity? Those are good questions. For now, just laugh along. Oh, and here’s another post involving cats.

Another example of human benefits of biodiversity. Story here. A while back I posted about amphibians also helping to rid the world of west nile virus bearing mosquitoes. Here is that post.

Report this morning from San Diego’s CW6 News, reporter Elsa Sevilla. See video on TV station’s Web site here.

A fungus in amphibians is killing thousands of animals around the world.

The statistics are alarming. Twenty-five of the world’s top scientists, experts and amphibian veterinarians gathered at the San Diego Zoo to discuss solutions to the problem. It’s all part of a three-day conference at the Zoo which ended Wednesday.

“Populations worldwide have declined because of this disease, Chytrid Fungus,” says Doctor Allan Pessier, a scientist at the San Diego Zoo.

Scientists say the deadly disease is not only killing amphibians, but thousands of species are becoming extinct, too. The fungus attacks the amphibian’s skin. In frogs, it can be deadly because frogs use their bodies to drink water. The disease can be transfered to other amphibians as the fungus survives in spores that live in the water. Both amphibians in captivity and those in the wild are known to be infected. The amphibians at the San Diego Zoo have been tested for the fungus and they tested negative.

“You go to a place that was healthy six months ago and is now covered with dead frogs all over the ground and the populations never recovers,” says Doctor Joseph Mendelson from the Atlanta Zoo in Georgia.

Mendelson conducts research at the Atlanta Zoo, but also travels around the world to see first hand what has happened to hundreds of species that are now extinct because of the disease.

It is not known exactly where the disease originated, but some experts believe it may have first been detected in Africa. Currently, South and Central America, and Australia are now seeing an alarming number of amphibians die due to the fungus.

“The Experts on the issue are here at the San Diego Zoo meeting with each other, exchanging ideas, developing tests, developing strategies, ways to combat this,” says Anne Redice of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, or IMLS, in Washington, D.C.

Thanks to a grant from IMLS, scientists, experts and veterinarians gathered for the three-day conference this week. They are looking for solutions to eradicate the deadly disease, but they are also looking to create a standardized method of testing in order to stop the fungus from spreading from amphibians in the wild to those who have been relocated to zoos around the country and the world.

“We are losing part of our eco-system. It will have ramifications on how the eco-system functions,” says Mendelson.

Hoping to prevent a major impact on the environment, scientists say they are literally, scrambling for answers to save thousands of species from extinction.

San Diego Zoo hosted a conference of scientists to review new, stringent standards for making sure amphibians don’t have the frog killer chytrid fungus as they come to zoos for “protective custody” against the many forces that are wiping them out in the wild. Story here.

Here’s a terrific story and video of the new amphibian education exhibit for kids at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago. Looks like a lot of fun, with an important message.