Review by Casey Cannon
When most think of extinction they tend to think of the large, charismatic animals lost to time. The eight-ton woolly mammoth or the forty-foot-long Tyrannosaurus. Right now, the Earth is believed to be going through a mass extinction event where thousands of species are predicted to be lost in the next hundred years. The book ‘In Search of Lost Frogs’ Dr. Robin Moore focuses on the extinction and conservation efforts to protect the world’s amphibians.
The first half of the book reads a lot like a global true-crime story. In the 80s’ through the 2000’s, scientists in remote corners of the world, sometimes in completely untouched forests, were watching frog populations go from plentiful to completely gone in a span of only a few years. New amphibians were being discovered and then never seen alive again at such a rapid rate some herpetologists started thinking of themselves as paleontologists. No one knew why this was happening at the time. Some thought it was El Niño, climate change or pollution. None of these could fully account for why species that had existed for millions of years, were disappearing from protected Costa Rican cloud forests to the Australian rainforest at roughly the same time. The major culprit was eventually found to be a fungus called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis or “chytrid” for short. This fungus grows on the skin of many amphibian species and essentially suffocates them. It spread through spores and appeared to be moving through Central America at a predictable pace. Efforts were made to collect some frogs in the path of the fungus, but the ones left in the wild were virtually wiped out.
The second half of the book is more of a personal collection of stories. They focus on the quest of the author and a larger group of scientists to search for the survivors of chytrid in the early 2010’s. There were populations of amphibians that lived in remote areas that had not been seen for decades or more. Many of these amphibians were believed to be extinct but habitats were so inaccessible, it was entirely possible a few holdouts remained. Dr. Moore travels to remote parts of Columbia, Haiti, Israel, and India in search of extinct amphibians while also telling firsthand accounts of the human events in those areas. He writes about how Haiti had just been devastated by a massive earthquake, Columbian jungles were full of armed guerrillas and revolutionaries and even experiencing roadside bombs being detonated in Israel. In these remote and dangerous places, there was hope for the frogs. Some of the “extinct” species were found to still exist in small, isolated pockets. One was even rediscovered in a camp rubbish bin after missing for 30 years. Just as exciting, new species were being found while searching for the lost ones.
Dr. Moore has an interesting perspective on conservation. In modern conservation, large, charismatic animals like pandas, tigers and elephants get the bulk of worldwide funds and efforts. While hundreds of amphibian species are virtually ignored. Conservation can be heavily driven by emotion; it’s easy for people to see videos of cute baby pandas or “crying” elephants and get them to donate money. It is a lot more difficult to convince people to put effort into a little brown frog in Haiti. Books like this are important because it gives these animals a story that lets people relate to them. I personally got excited by the story of a frog that had been missing since the 1950’s was rediscovered by a man who made a bet he would find it in a year. It’s good to hear there is hope in conservation stories that help build intrigue that, maybe, we don’t know what is left in the world. There are still little pockets of mystery and discovery in the world despite the realities of habitat destruction and urbanization.
I think books like this are important for herptoculturist to read. I believe a lot of times we as a group focus so much on our animals in boxes, we forget about the ones in the wild fulfilling their niche. It’s easy for us to read about reptiles and amphibians going extinct and think to ourselves “This is why they need to let us have all of them” while ignoring that there are causes we could possibly help stop when it comes to endangered wild herps.
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