Fungus is killing off frogs

A deadly fungus is spreading like a plague through amphibians, threatening to kill off over a third of the world's frog species.

The outbreak is so drastic that zoos from across the globe are banding together and volunteering to treat the sick creatures. Hogle Zoo has sent two zookeepers to Central America, where the situation is the most dire.

The loss is a huge, global problem because amphibians are a cornerstone species, said Shane Provstgaard, Hogle's reptile keeper. If they go extinct, the insect populations will explode, and the birds, snakes and fishes that feed on the amphibians may be at risk of extinction. "It will mess up the whole food chain."

"This is a catastrophic loss of entire species that are disappearing, not over a period of years, but of months," said Craig Dinsmore, the zoo's executive director. "It's not one stream or one field. It's whole areas of the tropics that are being affected."

Hogle Zoo's conservation fund allows for staff to volunteer on these types of projects. Provstgaard recently returned from a two-week trip to El Valle, Panama.

"It was very humbling to see these amphibians, when you know you're probably one of the last people to see them in the wild," he said.

The fungus, the chytrid fungus, could cause a global extinction in 20 years, he said, and in previously frog-rich Panama, the disastrous effects have already taken place.

"In some of the areas we were in, we would hike for an hour and we would not see a single frog," Provstgaard said. The staff members he worked with are now telling him they can no longer hear the frogs at night. "When I was there, we heard 13 to 20 species."

During Provstgaard's 14-day stay, he and colleagues from various zoos would search the highland rainforests, collecting frogs from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. for a treatment process. Often, Provstgaard would discover frogs in the "chytrid stance": the frogs stood upright on all four legs, hunched over.

After collecting the frogs, volunteers would take them back to a nearby hotel, where temporary operations have been set up. Amphibians were first cleansed with an anti-fungal bath, then quarantined for 10 days.

A state-of-the-art facility should be completed in the next month near the El Valle Zoo, where frogs will be treated, bred and put on display for the locals.

Educating the people of Panama through the display is a big part of the efforts, said Kevin Zippel, amphibian program officer for the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group, which is helping to coordinate the partnership of the various zoos involved.