April 30 is Save the Frogs Day
New Jersey Step outside after dusk and you will hear them. Spring peepers and wood frogs sing a chorus that announces the spring like nothing else. But amphibians are in considerable peril. Nearly one-third of the world’s 6,468 amphibian species are threatened with extinction, and at least 150 species have completely disappeared since 1979, making amphibians the most threatened group of animals on earth. Up to 200 species of frog have completely disappeared in the last 30 years. Amphibians are critical to our ecosystem. They clean waterways by eating algae during their tadpole stage. They are a vital source of food to dragonflies, birds, fish, and reptiles. And they consume large quantities of ticks, mosquitoes and other pests that serve as disease vectors that can transmit illnesses to humans. Ten percent of Nobel prizes in physiology and medicine have resulted from investigations that used amphibians. When an amphibian species disappears, so does any promise it holds for improving human medicine. Amphibians face a multitude of threats, including pollution, pesticides, habitat destruction, climate change, invasive species, infectious diseases, and over-harvesting for the pet, food, and bait trades. Whether future generations of children will get to see and hear amphibians in their native habitat will depend conservation efforts and an educated and informed public. In an effort to raise awareness of the plight of amphibians, the scientific community has declared April 30, 2010, the second annual “Save the Frogs Day.” The organization Save the Frogs has offered resources to teachers who want to involve their students in creative learning projects. Teachers can download a PowerPoint presentation, get their students writing poems or essays for contests offering cash prizes, or have them videos for uploading to YouTube. The organization offers resources for teachers in a range of disciplines, including English, art, music, history, philosophy, biology, math, physical education, and film. Save the Frogs also provides resources for students, scientists, and businesses; offers ways to get politically involved; and for participants to register events, like fundraisers or informational programs. For more information, visit www.savethefrogs.org.
Why did the frog cross the road?
Why did that frog, toad, or salamander cross the road? Amphibians require habitat with abundant food supplies, breeding areas, and hibernation sites and they need a safe travel path between these sites.
Increasing development in the Northeast continues to separate hibernation sites from breeding pools with road crossings that amphibians must travel. Some amphibians can only reproduce successfully in vernal ponds, which hold water for just a few months in the spring. Fish cannot live in these ponds and so will not eat the amphibian’s eggs or young.
On the first warm rainy nights of spring, amphibians move from safe upland forests to these vernal ponds. There, it is amphibian dating time. They search for mates, breed and lay their eggs for the next generation.
Volunteers for the New Jersey Endangered Species Program learn how to identify amphibian crossing sites and conduct night surveys, when the weather is suitable, to look for frogs and salamanders crossing roads. They collect amphibian mortality data and also act as “crossing guards” to help amphibians negotiate dangerous road crossings during the most stressful time of their life cycle.
Volunteers also act as ambassadors for the project by educating other people about what they do. To become a volunteer, visit the www.nj.gov/dep/fgw/wcchome.htm. For more information on this effort, visit www.njaudubon.org/SectionEducation/Amphibians.aspx.
New Jersey’s endangered and threatened amphibians
Endangered:
Salamander, blue-spotted (Ambystoma laterale)
Salamander, eastern tiger (Ambystoma tigrinum)
Treefrog, southern gray (Hyla chrysocelis) Threatened:
Salamander, eastern mud (Pseudotriton montanus)
Salamander, long-tailed (Eurycea longicauda)
Treefrog, pine barrens (Hyla andersonii)