The Blameless Ones

As the likely vector of the deadly chytrid fungus, which has imperiled amphibian populations around the globe,  you'd be hard pressed to think of an amphibian which has wrought more destruction upon the natural world than the African clawed frog.  Of course, there is its fellow invasive amphibian, the American bullfrog, which has spread across the globe devouring smaller creatures in its wake.  Oh, and the Cane toad, equally invasive, but with the added disadvantage of being very toxic.

For a class of animals that is generally considered to be highly endangered, some amphibians, it seems, are doing pretty well for themselves...

Efforts to control cane toads, for example (and let's not shy away from it, control = killing) are generally fairly uncontroversial.  Same for invasive insects.  Or snakes, such as the brown tree snakes of Guam, or the Burmese pythons in the Everglades.  But what about when that invasive threat is cute and cuddly... and perhaps answers to the name of Mittens?  

Feral and free-roaming domestic cats are an ecological plague on bird, reptile, and small mammal populations around the globe, having been implicated in many extinctions.  But when you tell many people that, they insist it isn't the cats' fault.  Either they excuse the behavior entirely as "natural" (never mind that domestic cats  aren't "naturally" found in the Americas, or New Zealand, or Australia, or...), or they agree it's a problem, but wrong to take action against the cats, because it's humans who are the real destructive species.

Well... duh.  I mean, it's not like the cats, or African clawed frogs, or brown tree snakes, built and manned ships that sailed the globe and invaded other ecosystems.  They were brought there and released, intentionally or otherwise, by humans.   They are OUR problem... which does still make them a problem.  If anything, it makes control of their populations outside of their range that much more our responsibility.

An African clawed frog that hatches out of an egg in California doesn't know it's any different from one that hatches out in southern Africa.  Both are just trying to survive, which means doing as at the expense of other creatures which are their prey, and, in the case of the California ones, potentially spreading diseases as well.  It's not the clawed frogs "fault" that their an endangered species.  I don't hold it against them, I don't want to suffer to "pay" for it, it's not a moral judgement.  

I just don't want any of them to live either a) outside of their native range, or b) if outside of their native range, in a carefully controlled environment, such as a zoo, where they are unable to impact native wildlife.  It stinks if you happen to be that frog or snake or cat that's collateral damage, caught up in an ecological crisis that you did not - knowingly - contribute to or cause.  But that's our responsibility for cleaning up our environmental messes.