Farming Frogs Can Save Them From Extinction

[Judi Lynn]

Farming Frogs Can Save Them From Extinction

Diseases are killing off many of Panama’s frog and salamander species. Are there enough animals left to breed them in captivity?


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Panama's critically endangered lemur leaf frog. (Photo: Matt McClain/'The Washington Post' via Getty Images)
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Jan 7, 2016
John R. Platt . . .

Panama’s frogs and other amphibians are in crisis.

The Central American nation—which is home to hundreds of frogs found nowhere else on Earth—has lost several species to extinction over the past 20 years. The cause is a deadly pathogen called the chytrid fungus, which infects amphibians’ skin and destroys their ability to breathe.

The fungus has been blamed for more than 100 extinctions worldwide and has been observed on hundreds of additional species.

Can future extinctions be prevented? A paper published this week in the journal Animal Conservation examines Panama’s 214 known frog species and comes up with a complex answer.

The paper, by a team of researchers from around the globe, concludes that targeted captive-breeding efforts will help to save a good number of these frog species from extinction.

More:
http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/01/07/last-ditch-chance-save-panamas-frogs-extinction

[KT2000]

1. when disease and fungus infections

take over a species it means their immune systems are shot. They absorb pollutants in their environment and that eventually makes them vulnerable to the diseases that kill them. Frogs are considered the canaries in the coal mine for all of us.
Stopping pollution of waterways will have to be done at some point because breeding efforts would likely use the same polluted water.
Deer have wasting disease, bats have the white nose fungus, bees have colony collapse, etc.