Earth Equity News

Amphibians Disappearing Faster than Other Terrestrial Vertebrates. By Zoe Cormier, Toronto Globe and Mail, June 14, 2008. "Among about 6,000 species of frogs, salamanders and caecilians (legless animals, pronounced like 'Sicilians') are some of the world's most bizarre animals... The amazingly diverse amphibians... predate all other terrestrial vertebrates. But the first group of animals to colonize the land is also the first that humans are driving off it. Amphibians are disappearing faster than any other animals since the dinosaurs: 32 per cent of all species are threatened with extinction, compared with 23 per cent of mammals and 12 per cent of birds. Almost half are in decline... As the most threatened group of animals on the planet, they are not just poster children for the biodiversity crisis, they are also harbingers of things to come. Because amphibians occupy a unique and crucial place in the food chain, their extinctions will ripple through the ecosystem and catalyze the rapid disappearance of other animals, large and small... We need to deal with every single issue at once: climate change, excessive use of agricultural fertilizers and pesticides, depletion of the ozone layer and, above all, habitat degradation. But the case isn't hopeless, [says says McGill University zoologist David Green, one of Canada's foremost authorities on amphibian declines], as long as we take action now. We have to give amphibians some credit,' he says. 'They are not so vulnerable and fragile. It's just the combination of factors that they cannot cope with. They are tough as boots if you give them a chance.'"