From the Washington Post, sad amphibian news: Frogs, toads and salamanders continue to vanish from the American landscape at an alarming pace, with seven species — including Colorado’s boreal toad and Nevada’s yellow-legged frog — facing 50 percent drops in their numbers within seven years if the current rate of decline continues, according to new government […]
Frogs, toads and salamanders continue to vanish from the American landscape at an alarming pace, with seven species — including Colorado’s boreal toad and Nevada’s yellow-legged
Lonely little guy on my front porch
frog — facing 50 percent drops in their numbers within seven years if the current rate of decline continues, according to new government research.
The U.S. Geological Survey study, released Wednesday, is the first to document how quickly amphibians are disappearing, as well as how low the populations of the threatened species could go, given current trends.
The exact reasons for the decline in amphibians, first noticed decades ago, remain unclear. But scientists believe several factors, including disease, an explosion of invasive species, climate change and pesticide use are contributing.
Tonight I went out to close the shutters on the windows on the front porch. There was a single wee tree frog behind one of the large shutters (the photo above was taken earlier this year). When I was a child in the 1970s, we used to see 20 or 30 tree frogs on a single window at our house — and these windows were about one-third the size of these tall front-porch windows I have now.
It’s not that my dad and mom live in the country and I live in town. I haven’t seen frogs on their windows in anything more than scant numbers in many years. They’re gone, the frogs.
Come to think of it, last spring and summer there were anoles everywhere on our porch. In 2013, I’ve seen maybe one or two. That’s really unusual.
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