By now, almost everyone has heard that frogs are becoming scarcer in the wild these days. Combined effects of habitat loss, diseases, introduced species, and changing climate have affected frog populations of most species worldwide and forced some species into extinction. Frogs and their amphibian relatives are fragile animals that absorb contaminants through their skin, making them sensitive to environmental factors such as disease, pollution, toxic chemicals, ultraviolet radiation, etc., and we can look at their decline right here on Amelia Island.
Where once most residents here had an abundance of green tree frogs in their yards, now more people are noticing the invasive Cuban tree frog that consumes these smaller frogs and helping lead to their disappearance. Cuban tree frogs have arrived here from Cuba, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas most likely in shipping containers as long ago as the 1920s and now their range extends throughout Florida and even a few points north. Adults are much larger than our native green tree frogs but also have the suction pads on their toes that enable them to hold onto surfaces. The young ones are more difficult to identify, but help is available at the University of Florida. If you have found what is definitely a Cuban tree frog on your property the best suggestion is to humanely kill it, by first using lidocaine to anesthetize it, then putting it in the freezer. Be careful, however, since these frogs secrete a toxin that can irritate your skin.
Other frogs in our area live in retention ponds, although these water bodies hold the pollutants that drain off our properties and are toxic to some of them. There used to be many leopard frogs in my own retention pond that squeaked and jumped into the water at my approach, but now they are also few and far between. It’s also been a long time since someone has found a native frog species in their yard for me to identify — mostly, it’s Cuban frogs they are finding.
That’s why I was excited to find a frog pond at Cave Creek Ranch in Portal, Arizona, full of leopard frogs. When I approached the vegetation around this little pond, lots of frogs hopped back in the water with their telltale squeak. Great! While my friends were out watching birds with their binoculars, I found my own activity. I settled onto a bench near this pond and happily waited until the frogs got used to my presence and started climbing out of the pond again to catch their breakfast bugs from the vegetation. I felt like a real Frog Princess, with dozens of frogs at my feet. Perfect!
It turns out that the frogs in this little pond were threatened Chiricahua leopard frogs — part of a research and reintroduction project conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arizona Game and Fish Department and other partners, including Cave Creek Ranch. The United States hosts about 28 different species of leopard frogs, including the Southern leopard frog in our area and this, the Chiricahua leopard found only in parts of northern Mexico, and southern Arizona and New Mexico.
The frogs in the pond at Cave Creek Ranch are monitored and batches of them are removed occasionally to be placed in suitable habitat in the wild. These frogs need year-round ponds, a rarity in the dry Southwest where water is increasingly diverted for agriculture, and they need places that have no invasive bullfrogs that consume them. Habitat management efforts are also being made to help in this species recovery but these efforts are not guaranteed success.
Leopard frogs in the Deep South were once part of the culinary scene and local restaurants used to have ample supplies of frog legs from local frog catchers. But, like other things, this practice is dying out along with the frogs and those people who used to catch them. Now most of the frog legs consumed here are imported from Asia, where they are managed in frog farms and a variety of different frog species are used to supply restaurants around the world.
If you want to learn more about frog conservation efforts, a good place to start is the Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative (ARMI), where a number of research projects are described. And if you want to get more involved, check out FrogWatch USA where citizen scientists like you can be trained to identify and report frogs in your area. And, have fun!
Pat Foster-Turley, Ph.D., is a zoologist on Amelia Island. She welcomes your nature questions and observations. patandbucko@yahoo.com