Disappearing Frogs

Why are Frogs disappearing around the world? Around the world, frogs are declining at an alarming rate due to threats like pollution, disease and climate change, which makes them the first indicators of ecosystem changes. Many Frogs all around the world are vanishing because the rapid changes in the environment are killing them. Also frogs, and all amphibians, may be sensitive indicators of water quality because they absorb gases and chemicals directly through the skin.

Vanishing frogs could be an early warning of serious water problems in the environment. Though fungi and habitat destruction have been implicated in the disappearances, the frogs’ problem comes down to one problem: Amphibians are extremely sensitive to changes in their environment. Amphibians’ physiology and complex water-and-land life cycle expose them to more environmental changes than most animals, and though they have survived climate changes before, today's changes are accelerating too rapidly for frogs to keep pace.

Also, frogs’ eggs have no shells, exposing embryos to increased UV-B radiation levels, which can cause harmful mutations. Pollution has contaminated the water frogs thrive in and global climate change is causing higher levels of infectious diseases. What can be done to protect threatened frogs? In some cases, nothing very effective.

There are a number of species that now live only in carefully controlled zoo or laboratory environments, and it may or may not be possible to reintroduce them into the wild. In many cases, others thinks it's better to concentrate on saving habitats and letting their endangered amphibians survive or perish in the wild than to catch the remaining animals and keep them in a modern ark in hopes of a later opportunity to reintroduce them somewhere.

Part of the reason is that climate change is altering habitats in ways that we can't predict very well, so that conditions that might be ideal in a particular spot might be ephemeral. In the United States, an unofficial Partnership for Amphibian and Reptile Conservation advises private land owners of things they can do to protect frogs and other living things, for example, fencing off just a part of a pond where cattle drink.