Let’s play a game.
Close your eyes and rattle off the names of the first five endangered
species that you think of. Let me guess –
elephant, rhino, panda, gorilla, and tiger?
Don’t try telling me that you didn’t name at least two or three of those. In the media, in pop culture, and, yes, in
the zoo, it’s the big charismatic mammals that attract the most attention. Which is frightening, in a sense, because it
means that fewer and fewer people are paying attention to one of the most important
conservation crises in the world: the great amphibian extinction.
Nearly a third of all amphibian species known to science are
threatened with extinction… and that’s not even counting the ones about which
too little is known to determine their status.
The causes are varied – habitat loss, overexploitation, competition with
invasive species, climate change. As if
these threats weren’t daunting enough, there’s also the most sinister threat
that amphibians face – Batrachochytrium
dendrobatidis, the chytrid (pronounced “kit-trid”) fungus, which is
infecting and wiping out frog populations around the globe. Over 160 amphibian species have gone extinct
in recent years, and many more are facing severe threats, which extinction in
the wild a likely outcome. Unfortunately,
zoos and aquariums are only posed to sustain and save a tiny handful of
amphibian species from extinction.
Amphibian Ark is a coalition of the World Association of
Zoos and Aquariums, the IUCN, and the Amphibian Survival Alliance. As its name implies, the Ark recognizes that
for many amphibian species, the most straight forward method of protecting the
species – safeguarding wild habitats – will not be enough to save these
species. You can use fences and armed
guards to protect habitats from hunters and loggers, but how can you stop the
spread of a microscopic parasite?
The Ark’s goal is to create sustainable captive breeding
populations of endangered amphibians to ensure that the species are not lost,
even if they disappear in the wild (a fate which has already befallen many
species, such as the Panamanian golden frog).
Whereas these captive breeding programs are carried out with the support
and participation of a European and American zoos, the Ark is unique in its
commitment to keep conservation local; their plans involve the establishment of
captive breeding colonies in the range countries of the amphibians. Not only does this keep local communities
involved in conservation, it frees up their overseas partners to start working
on conserving the next endangered amphibian species, developing expertise and
building up the population before handing that
species off to its own range country.
I’ve always felt that if zoos really wanted to get serious
about conservation, they would focus their collections on where they could do
the most practical good. In that case,
each of the larger zoos would have an amphibian house (also ideally a turtle
house, devoted to that equally imperiled group of animals). Conserving golden frogs or Puerto Rican crested toads
isn’t as glamorous as breeding rhinos and snow leopards, but it’s just as
important (if not more so!) and a heck of a lot cheaper – an entire species of
frog, toad, salamander, or caecilian can be maintained in less space than it
takes to maintain a single individual big cat or bear.
Captive propagation through the Amphibian Ark is only part
of the solution towards saving endangered amphibians. Some species have already been successfully
reintroduced into the wild, or are undergoing reintroduction efforts. Others face far grimmer circumstances – it remains
to be seen how or even if animals can be returned to habitats infested with
chytrid fungus. For some species, the
Amphibian Ark might seem like an Ark with no Ararat. Nevertheless, as long as these species
survive – even if only in captivity – we have future options. Once they are
gone, they are gone…
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