Major, $400-Million Initiative Proposed to Address Amphibian
Crisis
CORVALLIS, Ore. Fifty of the leading amphibian researchers in the
world have called for a new Amphibian Survival Alliance, a
$400-million initiative to help reduce and prevent amphibian
declines and extinctions an ecological crisis of growing
proportion that continues to worsen.
In a policy statement to be published Friday in the journal
Science, the scientists say that 32 percent of all amphibian
species are threatened and at least nine perhaps as many as 122
have become extinct since 1980. Its time, they say, for a more
organized and effective approach to address the various diseases,
habitat loss, invading species and other causes of this
problem.
This is part of an overall biodiversity crisis, and amphibians
seem to have been hit the hardest of all vertebrate species, said
Andrew Blaustein, a professor of zoology at Oregon State
University, a co-author of the policy statement and one of the
pioneers in this field, who first helped document amphibian
declines almost 20 years ago.
These are bioindicators that something is wrong with the planet,
he said. But amphibians play a major role in many ecosystems; in
some places the amphibian biomass is greater than that of all the
other vertebrates. The long-term ecological repercussions of their
decline could be profound, and we have to do something about
it.
Programs of research, training, monitoring, salvage operations,
disease management, captive breeding and other efforts are
envisioned under the new initiative, which may include a global
network of centers for amphibian recovery and protection. Support
from individuals, government agencies, foundations, and the
conservation community will be sought, the researchers said in
their report.
Amphibians have been around for more than 300 million years,
thriving before the dinosaurs and living long after they and many
other species had disappeared. Their dramatic decline and
extinctions now has alarmed many researchers since it first became
apparent in the past two decades.
Amphibians have sensitive skin, they live in both land and water,
have no protective hair or feathers, and their eggs have no hard
outer shell, Blaustein said. So its clear why they may be
vulnerable on some levels. However, they persisted for hundreds of
millions of years and just now are disappearing in many
areas.
Some of the causes have been identified. Rising levels of
ultraviolet radiation, increases in pollutants, pesticides,
extensive habitat loss due to agriculture or urbanization, invasive
species, and various fungal diseases have all been
implicated.
In viewing this issue, some biologists have called amphibians the
canary in the coal mine the first clear and sweeping biological
example of environmental change, pollution and toxicity that may
ultimately affect many other animal species, including
humans.
The demise of amphibians also has ecological ripple effects; they
provide a major control of insect pests, and in turn serve as part
of the food supply for birds, fish and other animals. The demise of
entire species also eliminates their possible use in biomedicine
and biotechnology.
One of the leading problems is a fungus that causes an infectious
disease called chytridiomycosis, the researchers said in their
Science report. In places where it is introduced and has not
previously been present, amphibian populations may disappear
rapidly, sometimes within six months, the researchers said. Global
climate change, the commercial trade of wildlife, and pollution may
all increase the movement or susceptibility to this fungus.
There are a lot of concerns, and we should work to address all of
them, not just one, Blaustein said. At first we need to focus our
efforts on research so we have a better idea of what types of
recovery programs will best work, and then we need active projects
in the field.
Scientists at OSU and the University of California-Berkeley were
among the first in the world to sound the alarm bell about
amphibian decline, publishing some professional papers in the early
1990s that alerted the world to the magnitude of this problem. One
publication by this group has been listed as the 10th most cited
paper ever in the journal Conservation Biology. OSU researchers
also were among the first to link amphibian declines directly to
global climate change, in a process that traced global warming
ultimately to catastrophic egg mortality in the western toad of the
Pacific Northwest Cascade Range.
Work is continuing at OSU today on contaminants and the effects of
UVB solar radiation that may amplify the impacts of the fungus that
causes chytridiomycosis.
Amphibian declines have been documented in North and South America,
Europe, Asia and Africa. Several species in the Pacific Northwest
are listed as candidates for the endangered species list. More than
a dozen species have disappeared from Australia in recent years.
And the problem appears to be getting worse.
Traditional programs and current laws and policies alone are
insufficient to address global threats that cross boundaries of
reserves and nations, the scientists said in their report.