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Weekend Edition

April 22 / 23, 2006

 

Jeepers, Creepers, What Happened to the Peepers?

Where Are The Frogs?

 

By DAVE LINDORFF

 

With the Bush neocon gang pushing ahead for war in Iraq, and talking

about going nuclear, it might seem an odd time to be thinking about

frogs, but hey, it's spring.

 

And by the way, where are the frogs?

 

Here in the burbs just north of Philadelphia, there used to be a lot of

frogs--bull frogs, leopard frogs, spring peepers--and also toads of

assorted sizes. Just down the road from me there is a small pocket park

with a vernal pond/swamp in one corner. When we moved here in 1997, I

walked by in early spring and it was so full of spring peepers, those

little inch-long tree frogs that make a single loud peep over and over

in search of a mate, that you could hardly distinguish one from the

next.

 

A year later, I went back and just heard sporadic peeps.

 

In years since, there have been no sounds from that location. The

peepers are gone.

 

Further off, at a larger park where there are two streams and a few

acres of swampland, there used to be similar multitudes of several

types of frogs, all croaking and peeping in springtime, and still water

areas abounding with blobs of jelly-like frog and toad eggs.

 

This year, I went back there with my 12-year-old son to help him with a

science project that would survey the local amphibian population.

 

After crawling through brush and slogging through swamp and moving

quietly along creekbanks, we found a grand total of five frogs, all

large and a couple years old. We also heard one lonely peeper, sadly

peeping out its call for a non-existent mate.

 

Where in years past the banks of one creek had been almost alive with

tiny baby toads at this point, we saw not one.

 

I can't prove it scientifically, but I suspect that there are no frog

or toad eggs in the waters of Horsham Park this year, and if there are,

I suspect that none of them will be hatching.

 

Why that is so is harder to say. Researchers looking into the

precipitous decline of amphibian populations--a world-wide

phenomenon--say it could be acid rain, since successful amphibian

reproduction requires vernal ponds that dry out periodically, thus

preventing the survival of fish, which would eat the eggs and larvae.

Vernal ponds and swamps, because they are on the surface of the ground

away from such things as limestone seams, don't have anything in them

that might neutralize some of the acid, which is then killing the eggs.

 

Another theory is that increased ultraviolet radiation, caused by a

decrease in the planet's ozone layer, is sterilizing the eggs, which

after all have not shell. Pollution runoff from Lawn-Doctored lawns is

also suggested, though I have my doubts on this one given that frogs

are in decline even in deep forests well away from manicured lawns.

 

Another theory is that general environmental stress, caused by

pollution and by global warming changes in micro and macro climates is

proving particularly stressful on amphibians because of their

mucous-coated and highly permeable skins, their vulnerability in

several different environments, and their particularly vulnerable egg

stage.

 

Finally there is one theory (one I doubt because of the global nature

across many climates of the declines), that fungal agents are killing

amphibians. If this is happening in some areas, it may well be the

result of other above-mentioned problems that are causing a

vulnerability to fungi.

 

What is clear, I think, is that the undeniable vanishing of frogs,

toads, salamanders and other amphibians--something that anyone who

spends any time in natural areas, even in the 'burbs, can attest to--is

a disaster on many levels. Who, first of all, would want to live in a

world where one entire phylum no longer existed? And what about spring

without frogs? Then too, given their important ecological role as

catchers of pests like mesquitoes and as food for other critters, their

demise will have a snowball effect. Finally, given that all the likely

causes being posited are related to human activities and human-caused

pollution, this die-off is a warning to all humanity of even greater

disasters that surely lie ahead.

 

The suddenness of the amphibian decline should have us really worried.

 

It could well be that the end to life on earth will not come gradually

over a century or over several centuries, but more the way it happens

in a goldfish bowl: one day your fish is swimming happily around in

clear water. The next, you find it floating belly-up in a cloudy,

stinking pool.

 

We should be listening to the peepers ... if we can find any.

 

Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the

Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch columns

titled " This Can't be Happening! " is published by Common Courage Press.

Lindorff's new book, " The Case for Impeachment " ,

co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is due out May 1.

 

He can be reached at: dlindorff

 

 

 

You can bomb the world to pieces

You can't bomb it into peace