Frogs-humankind's canary in the mine and they are dying

[knightfisher]

Now you see them. Now you don't. Such is the game frogs seem to be playing with herpetologists (scientists who study amphibians) worldwide. Except that this game is not fun.

The gastric brooding flog, for example, was first discovered in 1973 in a small area of the Australian rain forest. "The frog had the most amazing method of reproduction," says James Hanken, professor of herpetology at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. After mating, the female ate her fertilized eggs and incubated as many as 25 young in her stomach. After several weeks, she burped or vomited up tiny, fully formed frogs.

Although the brooding frog was never very common, scientists could always locate them. Then, about 1981, the species completely disappeared. "People don't know what happened, to this day," says Hanken. "Some people suspect that it may have been the result of a disease, but no one knows for sure."

Mysterious disappearing-frog stories like this are being heard all over the world. But not just frogs are disappearing: All forms of amphibians are on the decline, including toads, newts, salamanders, and a legless variety known as caecilians.

Canary in the Environmental Coal Mine

Amphibians occupy an important position in the community ecology for many reasons, says Hanken. First, they are a significant food source for other vertebrates such as snakes, birds, and small mammals. Plus, they eat insects such as mosquitoes, providing a natural pest control.

Amphibians also slow the greenhouse effect by eating the insects that normally contribute to decomposition of the forest floor, says Dr. Richard Wyman, executive director of the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve and Biological Research Station in Rensselaerville, NY.

But perhaps the biggest reason for paying attention is that they are the canary in the ecological coal mine, says Wyman. Coal miners used to carry canaries into the mines to warn of poison gases or lack of oxygen. If a canary died, then the men knew that they had to get out quickly.

Amphibians are the environment's warning signal. They are great indicators of what is going on in ponds, forests, the soil, and even the air, says Wyman.

Amphibians humankind's canary in the mine

We tune out toxic environment while Next Top Model flows over us like a burst sewage line

Vancouver Courier

Published: Friday, June 20, 2008

In one of his comedy routines from the 1900s, the late comedian Bill Hicks bemoaned the litany of horrors from CNN. After being pummeled by broadcasts about AIDS, famine, depression and so forth, Hicks wanders over to his window and opens it. He sees the blue skies and hears the crickets chirping. All seems right in his world, or at least in his neighbourhood. He concludes that CNN's then-CEO Ted Turner must have some anger issues. Jane Fonda obviously isn't sleeping with Turner, and he's taking it out on everyone else.

Like Hicks, most of us in the planet's privileged five percentile can sit with our feet up, watching the world go to hell in high-def, precisely because of the very things that are implicated in our disasters--or, at least, the ecological ones. Namely, our telecommunication networks, electrical grid, petrochemical industry, agribusiness, fishing fleets, pharmaceutical-food complex, coal-fired factories, pension funds and portfolios. Not to mention the military muscle needed to globally defend the status quo down to the last frog and songbird.

Yes, the last frog and songbird. Last Saturday's Globe and Mail ran a piece on the global disappearing act by amphibians, including the latest thinking on this vast and depressing bio-mystery. Scientists estimate 32 per cent of all species are threatened with extinction. These bellwether creatures are vanishing faster than anything since the dinosaurs, and if enough frogs and other amphibians go extinct, scientists predict a cascade of extinctions among other species--likely including us.

Joining the usual suspects for amphibian decline--loss of habitat, ultraviolet radiation, fertilizer and pesticides--is a new factor, a skin fungus that kicked into high gear with the international transport of frogs, and is being turbocharged through global warming.

As I glumly read through the rest of the Saturday Globe, I couldn't stop thinking about the amphipocalypse, and how everything else in the paper seemed laughably irrelevant in comparison. The capper was a restaurant review of some new Hogtown hotspot. The frogs are collectively croaking, and some Tranna foodie is editorializing about how the tuna was undercooked?

If the importance of amphibian extinction translated into column inches and airtime, dying frogs would be front page news daily, and CBC silverback Peter Mansbridge would wear a wart-encrusted toad mask. As for me, I'd have a newt or salamander in the corner of my political cartoons--or a frog crooking a webbed finger, saying, "J'accuse!"

That's why so many of us feel as confused as Bill Hicks, hearing about ecological chaos without witnessing hardcore, local effects. Food and gas prices are up, sure, but when I go to the window, I see the crows going about their business and everything looking pretty much okay. When will the final reckoning arrive at our doorsteps?

According to science, it's already arrived. The lives and deaths of living things are as tightly interwoven as the patterns on a Persian rug--and the molecular motifs that thread from factories to frogs to birds inevitably unravel within our own bodies. Industrial pollutants are implicated in human endocrine disruption, with a 40 per cent decline in sperm count in 50 years. The milk of Inuit mothers is so contaminated it can be considered hazardous waste.

Poll after poll indicates the environment is the most important issue to Canadians. Yet many of us tend to shut down, after experiencing an ongoing, Hicks-like disconnect between scientific studies and our perches of privilege. The ecological problems seem too damn big. Don't show us another image of a polar bear slipping off a melting ice floe. Don't badger us about the strip-mined ocean floor or the acidic coastal dead zones. Don't tell us about the islands of plastic trash floating in the Pacific. We're not in the mood. Rather than hear about a toxified environment, we'd prefer to have Canada's Next Top Model flow over us like a burst sewage line.

This isn't what you'd call a sustainable mental approach, not when there are responsible people out there trying to rein in our planet-sized appetite. On the frog front, there are efforts to rescue the surviving species and get them into the equivalent of aquatic safe houses. Although hardly a permanent solution, Amphibian Ark is trying to raise $50 million for the captive breeding of 500 species. It costs an estimated $50,000 to $100,000 dollars to save one amphibian species--the cost of a single Lexus. If one rescued species isn't worth one more car off the assembly line to us, Homo sap truly deserves to end up a one-hit wonder in the fossil record.

So when you see a frog in the corner of my next editorial cartoon, you'll know why. For more information on Amphibian Ark, go to www.amphibianark.org.

[bigugli]

Its not just the frogs. The bee population has been drastically reduced as well. This, in time, will affect our food supply.

[Black-Jimmy]

Its not just the frogs. The bee population has been drastically reduced as well.

Yes the bees have and that's not good for us!!

[crofeather]

I look back at early pictures of my grandfather and see the huge stands of American Chestnut trees in King's Forest (Hamilton escarpment) in the background....

When I first went to primary school I remember the huge vase shaped American Elms lining the east side (the girls side of the school by the way, ) of Queen Mary, Hamilton and up and down Cannon Street. Couple years later they were nothing but dead stumps that we as kids would dig through for huge white grubs.

Today its the American Ash quickly disappearing with invasion of the emerald Ash borer beetle and the huge stands of Sugar Maple trees are beginning to disappear with acid rain, changes in their environment and human encroachment upon their territories (and who knows what else?).

Just last year it was our precious honey bees and their disappearance that were THE big story and this year you hardly hear a thing about it despite the fact that I have yet to see one single bee in an area that used to be prolific in them. How quickly the news headlines, and therefore the human conscience forgets now.

Our amphibians have been disappearing for years now and yet nobody thinks twice about it til the CORPORATE NEWS comes out with its latest big, flashy, "Doom Is Near" headline.

And now also its Agribusiness and genetically modified organisms threatening in future unknown ways our biodiversity in genetically diverse seed stocks. Not only the seed stocks are threatened but somewheres down the line we might be struck by some totally unforeseen implications to the delicate way our environment is balanced by Ma Nature.

Introduced species, disappearing species, climate change, the ozone layer, pestilence and disease, gas and food prices ... todays dramatic headline ... tomorrows dusty archive of forgotten memories ... when will we ever learn? One day it will all come back and bite us in the rearside.

So many problems, so few solutions. Governments drag their ashes in implementing solutions, most of which won't start taking effect within their own mandates, years down the road when obviously the next gov't will knock out any legislation possibly dealing with those problems....

And the solutions must be coming NOW or (before its too late) never ....

Its all so overwhelming. "If a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear?" Do enough people really care?

But the problems and their implications are so huge what can one single individual do?

cro

[smerchly]

In todays Standard , a letter to the Editor , a guy who is very concerned about the frogs , bees & amphibions etc , blames nicoteen based pesticides for the demise of these creatures & the government turns a blind eye to this prob .because it's a cheap low cost pesticide . Who knows what it can do to the final destination at the top of the food chain......meaning US ! I am convinced more than ever now that the BIG corporations have so much $$$/power they can "influence" any government to see thing "their way"

[Dan Andrews]

They are the Government!

Another example: West coast Salmon are dissapearing due to no food in the open ocean.

Answer: Too many people for the environment to handle!

Answer: Can't say without the RCMP breathing down my back

Answer: Go with the flow until it stops. It's a world reality they always knew would come but not in their life time. Hopefully not in my kids life time either. What can we do? Your little part and thats it. Whats it worth? I'd rather not admit it.

Do I sound crazy , sorry I'll go have another beer