Earth Equity News

Amphibians Face Grave Peril With 165 Species Already Gone. By Juliet Eilperin, WashPost, May 12, 2008. "The 300 Kihansi spray toads residing in a small room at the Bronx Zoo chirp cheerily as they bask in a light sprinkling of water 14 times a day. Until a few years ago, the tiny, mustard-colored toads existed only in a river gorge in Tanzania. Now the survivors are confined to the Bronx and Toledo zoos, having gone extinct in the wild. With thousands of amphibian species facing unprecedented threats to their survival, scientists have launched a global effort to collect them in zoos in an attempt to save them from disappearing altogether. The program, called Amphibian Ark, aims to keep 500 species in captivity and breed enough to eventually reintroduce them into the wild... Scientists have been tracking the rapid disappearance of amphibians for two decades, but new evidence suggests [they] face increasingly grave peril. A third to a half of all amphibians are now threatened with extinction; 165 species have already vanished. In Latin America and the Caribbean alone, three of every four amphibian species are critically endangered."