A Plague on Frogs

I actually knew the answer to yesterday's edition of the Geo Quiz on The World, a program carried on our local public radio station. The clue was an island known as The Emerald Isle of the Caribbean with a breed of frog called a Mountain Chicken. The answer: Montserrat, which Egidijus and I spent our honeymoon. 

The segment then went on to discuss how the Mountain Chicken is falling prey to the same fungus that has been killing frogs the world over. The guest speaking about the problem noted that the frog has been killed off all over the island, except for a remote valley. He and his colleagues recently traveled to Montserrat and removed several dozen frogs so they can put them in a controlled setting and hopefully keep them safe from the fungus until they can reintroduce them to their natural habitat.

I knew EXACTLY the frog they were discussing. These creatures were all over the island while we were there. They come out at night in such droves that it was nearly possible not to run over them, since they stood right in the middle of the road. While I am semi-accustomed to seeing small furry animals running across the road in front of my vehicle now and then, I was entirely unprepared to see creatures hopping in my headlights. 

The other memorable thing about the frogs of Montserrat was the deafening noise they make at night. The first evening we were there, we literally struggled to fall asleep over the din. We actually shut the louvre windows of our bedroom as many nights as we could to avoid this problem. I have a video I shot of our villa, in which all you can hear is the sound of the frog songs filling the night air.

And now, according to what I heard on this program, these frogs are all but silenced. I cannot imagine how quiet that must seem to the locals, like someone who grew up in the city -- reassured by the nocturnal noise of sirens, horns, car engines and echoing voices -- who then tries to adjust the relative silence of an evening in the country. 

But perhaps the most shocking thing about all of this to me is how quickly this extinction has taken place. We were there in October 2007. That's 19 months. In 19 months, the frogs on the island have gone from deafening to silent. 

I have heard quite a bit over the past few years about how amphibian populations, and especially frogs, are being among the hardest hit by global warming. From the loss of habitat to the rapid rise of fungal diseases, like that killing the Mountain Chicken, thousands of species of frogs are threatened or perhaps already lost. But, as with anything like this, such dire warnings are abstract to the mind. Until you know the answer to the Geo Quiz, and then everything changes.