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Originally Posted by frogparty
bummer. At least there is still a captive population in existence, but they will probably never re-enter the wild. Think about all the as of yet undescribed species we have yet to learn of that are facing the same plight... lost to the world forever. Maybe the panamanian gov. will allow some of the captive bred offspring to be distributed to other institutions now with the expressed purpose of showing folks what a technically extinct animal looks like. The sad thing is that chytrid has reached as far north as washington state and maybe beyond, and there seems to be no sign of a potential cure for it, besides treating every living amphibian with micatin. The consequences of losing amphibians from the world will be catastrophic. Such an important part of the food web to be lost, such a travesty.
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Chytrid was at least that far north in the 1960s. See Historical Evidence of Widespread Chytrid Infection in North American Amphibian Populations
MARTIN OUELLET*††, IGOR MIKAELIAN†, BRUCE D. PAULI‡, JEAN RODRIGUE§, AND DAVID M. GREEN Conservation Biology Volume 19 Issue 5, Pages 1431 - 1440
I tried to link to the abstract but the link wouldn't work.
Ed
