“Save The Frogs Day” is April 30, 2010. What’s that you say? You didn’t know that the frogs needed saving. I was not aware myself until I was channel surfing recently and stopped on one of the local ETV channels where I caught this episode of Nature – Frogs: The Thin Green Line. You can watch the full video here:
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/frogs-the-thin-green-line/video-full-episode/4882/
The episode mostly deals with scientist in the field who are trying to save many species of frogs from extinction due to a naturally occurring disease and predators as well as man influenced environmental changes such as introduction of trout into the ecosystem where there previously were none as well as chemical runoff into the the frogs natural habits.
Now, you may be thinking to yourself: I didn’t know Brian was a tree hugging hippie! Well, I’m not. But I also am no fool. When you start messing with the food chain I start getting concerned. Because, I like to eat. Not frog legs of course. That’s just nasty. Do you know where those legs have been!
Anyway, this got me to thinking. When do we cross the line between fixing what we broke and interfering with the natural order of things? I love frogs. I think they are beautiful to look at and they are very important to our ecosystem as we know it. I think we should be correcting things like the pollution we are introducing to these frogs that are causing mutations (are mutations always a bad thing? That’s another article I’ll have to cover later.) Also, we should try to remove the trout we placed unnaturally into the frogs habitats years ago. But should we be stopping chytridiomycosis.
The Chytrid fungus is naturally occurring in the environment and may play a role that we are not aware of. Nature has a way of evolving and replacing things that are removed from the ecosystem. It’s very resilient. As a human I value life and I think frogs are beautiful and I would love to always have them around. So I support saving the frogs. But I also question how much and how far our good intentions will swing before we stall the natural evolution of things.
I’m no expert. I’m just a guy who likes to question things. I also value your opinion. So be sure to comment below even if it’s to say “Brian. You are an idiot and you don’t know how to use commas.”
Brian D.
You know what’s cool… frogs. Frogs are cool. I understand the importance of keeping a well balanced food chain, as well as whatever other function in nature frogs serve, but I imagine the reintroduction of trout serves as a future food source for humans. In those situations I would vote the frogs off the make believe island in my head. Is the bacteria natural, or a byproduct of human meddling? If it’s the natural sort of thing, the tree hugging hippie sort should happily welcome the eradication of little froggies–mother nature/earth is the hippie’s infaulable god right? So it must have looked at the frogs and said, “lol kthnxbye.” Perhaps we can just ask the guys in lab coats to run a test on what would happen if frogs weren’t part of the ecosystems.
I imagine the bacteria is man made by a mad scientest who spent too much time doing murloc quests in WOW and came to the realization that frogs, not cats, will be the next great evolution, and took desisive action to prevent his questing nightmares seeping into reality.
And here I thought Save the Frogs Day was when all of the Mormon missionaries were going invade France.
The disease is exacerbated by pollution and the human-introduced predators. The right thing to do is clean up the pollution, remove the trout (yum!), cure the disease that exists NOW, then step back and let Nature have her way with the frogs.
Hi Brian,
The chytrid fungus (https://savethefrogs.com/chytrid) is being spread worldwide becuase humans ship 100 million frogs around the world each year for pets, food, lab usage, zoos, and bait for fishermen, all with virtually zero disease testing or quarantine. The fungus is naturally occuring, but it is an invasive species in most of the world, and thus there is nothing natural about its effect on the 100 amphibian species it has driven to complete extinction in recent decades.
Thanks for the post.
SAVE THE FROGS!
And everyone should get involved this Friday, April 30th, the 2nd Annual Save The Frogs Day:
https://savethefrogs.com/day
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Dr. Kerry Kriger
Save The Frogs – Founder, Executive Director, Ecologist
https://savethefrogs.com/kerry-kriger