Save the Frogs! How Amphibian Conservation Can Save Our Planet

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), co-hosts Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole sit down with Dr. Kerry Kriger, the founder and executive director of Save the Frogs. Dr. Kriger shares the story behind the creation of the world’s leading amphibian conservation organization and dives into the urgent need to protect frogs and other amphibians. Learn about the incredible work being done globally to prevent the extinction of amphibians and how you can get involved in this vital conservation effort.

Perfect for nature enthusiasts, conservation advocates, and anyone who wants to learn how saving frogs can help save the planet.

To learn more about SAVE THE FROGS!

• https://savethefrogs.com/
• Subscribe to their newsletter at https://savethefrogs.com/newsletters/
• Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Discord, Pinterest, LinkedIn @savethefrogs

Transcript

Hello and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you wanted to know about nature and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura.
And I'm Katy. And guys, today we have another guest and we're gonna be talking about amphibian conservation.
Yeah. So we're excited to have Dr. Kriger on, Dr. Kerry Kriger. Do you want us to call you doctor or Kerry, or does it matter?
You can call me whatever you want. Dr. Kreiger's fine, Kerry's fine. I am, I'm happy to be here, and I am Dr. Kerry Kriger, founder and executive director of Save the Frogs.
Looking forward to talking frogs with you.
Yeah, yeah. Katy and I both have been in contact with your organization in the past. When we worked at the Little Rock Zoo, we would do with Save the Frogs Day on April 26th, and we'd get some cool stuff from your organization and promote it.
I participated in some of the classes that you guys do, so it's nice to have you on here since we both have this connection already. Okay, listeners, a little bit about Save the Frogs as an organization. It was founded in 2008 by amphibian biologist, Dr. Kerry Kriger, and is the world's most effective amphibian conservation organization.
They work not only in California, not even across just the United States, but around the entire world to prevent the extinction of amphibians and to create a better planet for humans and wildlife. Their mission is to protect amphibian populations and to promote a society that respects and appreciates nature and wildlife. Their vision is a world in which not a single amphibian species is threatened with extinction.
Okay, awesome. And it seems like there's lots of different team members that are all helping your organization to work.
Yeah, we have volunteers all around the world, and we've had activities in many different countries. Save the Frogs Day has been going on for 15 years, and we've got volunteers who've held Save the Frogs Day educational events in about 60 countries. We also have a lot of other programs that get a lot of worldwide attention, such as our Save the Frogs Art Contest, which has had entries from at least 100 countries.
And we also do plenty of work in the USA.
Cool. Yeah, so Dr. Kriger holds his PhD in environmental science from Griffith University in Gold Coast, Australia, and a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He is a recognized expert on the amphibian disease ketridiomycosis, a topic on which he's published many articles in several peer-reviewed international scientific journals.
He's also a man of many other talents. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. He's climbed mountains, and he also teaches, records, and performs music on a variety of instruments from around the world.
Alrighty, let's dive in. Okay, what inspired you to create Save the Frogs?
Well, I spent four years in Australia doing my Ph.D. research, and amphibians are having a lot of trouble worldwide, and many species have gone extinct or declined significantly in their population sizes. And I enjoyed working with frogs.
I spent a lot of time out in the rainforest, and my main skill set when I finished my Ph.D. was with amphibians. They had not been saved, so I didn't feel any need to change careers or topic.
And what I saw was that there was a lot of amphibian conservation going on in academia, and it was pretty much restricted to academia, the universities and researchers. And a lot of scientific papers would end with a short paragraph about recommendations to fix whatever problem they were writing, but I didn't see anyone really implementing those things. And most people in the world 15 years ago did not know anything about amphibians declining.
Fortunately, a lot more people do now. It's not as if everybody knows, but it's more of a popular topic. So my main goal is to get the word out to the public and politicians and teachers and students.
So the first year and a half of Save the Frogs was pretty much exclusively education, because I still think education is the root of all successful amphibian conservation. If people don't know, people don't care, then nothing's going to get done. So we've always done a lot of education.
And then, yes, we did branch out into advocacy, ecotourism, wetland construction and restoration and various projects. But I still always keep education as the number one thing that we do. And I'll also say there were no amphibian concert.
There was no public charity anywhere on the planet that I had ever heard of that was dedicated exclusively to amphibians.
That's so crazy. Considering it's 2008, I mean, I guess now it's a long, not, you know, fairly decent time ago, but it doesn't feel that long ago, but that it took that long. But I feel like it's like that with all reptile and amphibian stuff.
Like, I feel like there's such overlooked groups, whereas everyone is so focused on, you know, large mammal conservation and ocean conservation. And nobody even remembers it. Like, yeah, frogs are there, too.
Freaking pandas, man.
I mean, they still do get most of most of the, you know, eyes and most of the money in conservation. But fortunately, there are way more people interested in amphibians than in 2008.
Yeah, I can see that, too. Just because, yeah, I think a lot more people are aware of it from all the work from all of us out in the field that are like, hey, by the way, a third of them are, you know, in trouble or gone already. This is a like a problem that should have been addressed before, but at least we're doing something now.
Yeah, and I thank you for holding those Save the Frogs Day events.
It was so fun. It was so fun. The kids was we did our own little like coloring contests and printed out giant frog banners and made totaboads.
It was just fun.
Yeah. So did you always think that you'd be doing this type of work? Were you just that kid that was always catching frogs?
Yes, please say yes.
But I spent a lot of time at the river nearby when I was growing up and down. My parents built a pond on the property when I was young and I'd spent a lot of time down there and I'd see frogs. But I definitely was not that interested in the frogs.
And I took very little biology all the way through high school and through college. I studied mechanical engineering.
Engineering.
And so I was deep in the sciences but not the biological sciences. And so, yeah, I definitely didn't think about it too much until towards the end of college. It kind of struck me that environmental science was an actual career.
I'd never even thought about that as a possibility. And as I became more interested in nature and wildlife and the outdoors and environmental conservation, I started to think, you know, that's kind of more what I'd be happy doing compared to mechanical engineering. And so, yeah, eventually, I went to Hawaii and I volunteered for a summer working with bird researchers on Mount Akea and confirmed from that experience that I did want to pursue a PhD in environmental science.
Cool.
Found out that frogs were rapidly disappearing. Thought of a place in Australia that was really beautiful. Yongella National Park, lots of waterfalls, lots of frogs.
And I thought, hey, that'd be cool to go there. And I didn't end up where I did for a few days, but that was not the primary place I ended up. I ended up in Southeast Queensland and spent four years there studying frogs, really liked it.
And I guess the rest is history. I hadn't thought of it. I guess, well, I won two large grants the first year of my PhD research.
And I thought, you know, I don't even have my degree. And this is just my first year. I've won two grants.
So, you know, I could just start a nonprofit organization and raise money. And then I wouldn't have to work for the government or for a university and all their bureaucracy.
Very true.
I was trying to avoid. Now, I wasn't correct about it being so easy to raise money. But that's kind of it's kind of fortunate that I did not know much of anything about the nonprofit world.
I just had a thought, you know, I'm going to start a nonprofit. And even when I finished my Ph.D. I kept on for about a year.
I was just kind of finishing up writing some papers about my research. And it kind of just struck me all of a sudden time to start save the frogs. I had the thought long before, but it was always just, you know, something I'll do in the future.
And got going. And there was all there's always been plenty to do. I never wake up any day wondering what I can do to save the frogs.
And I think that hopefully should be the case with anybody. If you're interested in protecting any type of wildlife, there's a ton of things that you can do. You just have to, you know, pick your first thing and get going on it.
Yeah, I definitely think like you must be a pretty organized person because there has to be so much to do. It must be hard to prioritize. Like, I just feel like I'd get up in the morning and feel like there's so much to do.
Where do I even get started?
I do try to be organized. I'm not sure if I'm best at priorities.
Join the Chrome.
I do what's got to get done, and then I try to do the things of most interest to me. I always try to, you know, I guess that's how I end up.
That's certainly how I prioritize.
Well, you know, we've got to do stuff we like doing or else we're going to quit. And I think that's how I ended up in, you know, a frog focused career is just by always trying to think about, you know, what do I want it, what do I want to do, what am I going to be happy doing? So, you know, that's what I try to do.
Organization is super important. I was thinking about it yesterday as I sometimes do nonprofit organization. You know, a large business is called an enterprise.
A startup is called a startup. We're actually we have organization in our name, so we have to be organized. And the more organized you are, the more you're going to get done and the easier things are going to be.
And most nonprofit organizations don't survive very long. So I think, you know, I'm always focused on how can I get more and more organized and get more done with less stress.
Yeah, I'm just so impressed that you saw a nation was like, I'm going for it. Yeah, especially when, you know, the environmental science is so big, like you had so many choices.
Yeah, well, I guess, let's see. My first thing was, as I said, I studied birds in Hawaii or I helped out. You know, I did a research project and would spend my days with the PhD researchers watching what they do and helping out.
I knew I didn't want, I like birds, but I didn't want to study birds as a career. And I started thinking about, you know, I like hanging out at streams. If I'm going hiking and I end up at a stream, I'm always going to sit down, take a break and relax there.
So I just started thinking about, you know, what hang, what lives at streams. Thought about benthic macro invertebrates, but thought, you know, they don't have too much personality. Frogs have a bit more personality.
We found out they were rapidly disappearing. And just, you know, all of a sudden it was like, boom, I'm going to go to Australia and study frogs.
That makes sense. Yeah, I feel like a lot of frogs got to be pretty chill.
But also what a rough string of research places to Australia, Hawaii.
So, so far, what has been your absolute favorite aspect of your job?
Yeah, I don't know if I can narrow it down. I have a few different things. Yeah, like I really like giving presentations.
I've given about 450 Save the Frogs presentations. And I guess, you know, you're able to interact with people, most of them who have not thought too much about amphibians in the past, most likely. And you get to see people kind of get turned on to the world of amphibians.
I like that.
I like to mentor people and spread my knowledge. You know, I don't want to... You know, we're an educational organization, and I like to get the knowledge out there.
And I like seeing people who, you know, keep it up for a long time and then go on to have successful careers and lead independent projects and, you know, have a lot of success that I think that I contributed to. And I like getting to go out in the field. Oftentimes, I don't get out enough.
I'm at my computer a lot. But as we discussed, Save the Frogs has been leading eco tours since 2013. We've held about 15 eco tours.
I've probably been on 10 or 11 of those. And getting outside, spend 10 to 12 days out in nature, and you definitely feel good after spending, you know, going frogging every night and some waterfalls. So I like going out there.
I get to travel to a lot of far away, cool, exotic places, and occasionally have some experiences that, you know, you couldn't really pay for them. There's no tours to take you places. We had, for nine years, we were really active in Ghana and West Africa, and I got to travel around to some very remote places in Ghana.
I did a speaking tour of India and went out to some remote villages and met some kids, spoke at schools where, you know, who knows if any foreigners had ever been there before. So yeah, lots of good things about Saving the Frogs.
That sounds so fun. I mean, I wish I got to travel more. It sounds so fun, especially talking about what you're passionate about.
Like, that's the perfect combo, I think.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, you said that you love talking education and how important it is.
So now is your shot to educate some of our listeners, because we have talked about, you know, different amphibian species on the podcast before, but I don't believe we've ever really covered what makes amphibians unique. So could you go ahead and explain to our listeners kind of what makes amphibians unique and different than other classes of animals?
Yeah. All right. Well, I'll say as the vertebrates go, there were the fish and then the amphibians left the water, at least part of the time.
So amphibians, most of them have a terrestrial stage. Amphibians are most often confused with reptiles and the word herpetology, the study of amphibians and or reptiles comes from hundreds of years ago when scientists were confused in general and thought that there was a difference. So the main differences, amphibians and reptiles, reptiles have scales and amphibians do not.
Amphibians, many of them have metamorphosis and the reptiles do not. And gills and lungs potentially. So those are the primary differences.
Mammals have hair. So amphibians are usually pretty easy to distinguish from other animals. It's that I think primarily probably salamanders may get confused with lizards.
Pick them up and look at their skin. And if they have scales, then they're reptiles. Amphibians tend to have smooth, permeable skin, not always smooth, but it's permeable skin and they can absorb oxygen and water directly through their skin.
There's many amphibian species that don't have lungs. Even as adults, they can get all the oxygen through their skin. Those ones are usually up in high mountain streams because high mountain streams have a lot of dissolved oxygen in the water.
Yeah, we have a red salamander at the Nature Center that we bring out and you sort of talk, and everyone's like, a lizard. And we're like, no, not quite.
Children, you are wrong.
And we've got toads too, and so of course, they're always frogs. But then we talk about the difference. Man, I love working with the toads.
They, of all the amphibians I've ever worked with, I've worked with some frogs before, but the toads have some crazy personalities. Those girls are so food motivated, they will literally hop out of their tank into your hand because they just want to come out and eat a cricket or something. Well, so, you know, I don't want to put you in a box and be like, Kerry, that guy's the frog guy.
He loves frogs and only frogs. Would you say that your favorite group of amphibians is frogs? If it is cool?
If it's not...
I will also say, though, the original name of the organization was going to be Save The Toads, but I just figured that toads would not get the proper response.
Probably.
And all toads are a type of frog.
I was just going to say that.
They're a family of frogs. They're usually easy to tell apart, but oftentimes it's hard to say all toads have this and all frogs have this because there is some overlap. Toads tend to have rough skin.
They've got wart-like glands on their body. They're not warts, but people look at them and think that they are. The toads tend to kind of run along, whereas the frogs tend to hop.
So there's various differences, but all toads are frogs. But yeah, frogs, I'd say they're my favorite group. They're the most interesting.
They're the ones that I see most often. I don't end up in salamander territory too often. I've never seen a Sicilian, not a wild one.
I'd love to. There was a Save Frogs eco tour in Costa Rica that came upon them, but I was not there to see it. So some people are Sicilians.
But even as far as that, I'll say frogs are my favorite animal. And that's probably just because I've spent so much time with them. And they are really cool.
They don't smell bad. They don't attack you. They're not going to bite.
They're not going to cause any harm. They're really easy to work with. And they do have a lot of character.
And they look cool. They sound cool. So I just like them a lot.
Do you have a specific species in general that's your favorite? I can't choose a favorite animal, but do you have one that you're like, that's the one?
At least today, what's your favorite?
Well, I haven't seen them in a long time, but our logo frog is the southern orange-eyed tree frog from southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales, Australia. And I've always liked them. It's probably because I spent a lot of time with them.
But also they hang out in the rain forest in really beautiful areas, usually on the edges of waterfalls, and they come out in the pouring rain. They usually find them surrounded by southern orange-eyed tree frogs. I'm like really out there in nature.
In paradise.
So I associate them with that. And they have a really cool call, such as...
Please do it. Yes!
Well, that is really unique. It's the two-tone.
I haven't practiced that. I haven't gotten warmed up.
So why are amphibians important to the ecosystems?
Yeah, let's see. They're food for birds, fish, dragonflies, snakes, monkeys, beetles. Lots of animals depend on amphibians.
And the amphibians are also eating a lot of wildlife, including pest species that humans tend to not like, such as pests of agricultural crops, so they're helping protect our agriculture. And they're also eating flies, ticks, mosquitoes that spread lots of diseases that we don't want. So I think that's super important.
Tadpoles are in the stream, and they're filtering out the water. They're consuming algae. A lot of us, if we live in cities, are depending on water that's coming through city filtration systems.
So the tadpoles are out there doing a lot of that work for us before it even gets to the city, so they're keeping the cost of water down for us. They're bioindicators, so they're thought to serve as an early warning system of environmental decay. This is for a few reasons.
One, they're amphibious, so they're dependent on healthy land and water, most of them anyway. So if anything goes wrong with either the land or the water, they can have trouble. They have permeable skin, as I mentioned.
That's good for them, being able to get water and oxygen through their skin, but they can also absorb pollutants really easily. And also, unlike birds, they cannot just fly off to a new forest or a new wetland. If something goes wrong where they live, a lot of them just naturally don't migrate too far, and they have a high chance of dying if something goes wrong there.
So they're going to experience environmental problems, population declines faster than a lot of other species.
Yeah, I feel like it's such an interesting trade-off in nature, because you can head your bets. The amphibians are like, well, I don't have to breathe with just lungs. I could also breathe through my skin.
You'd think this would make them more resilient. But when it comes to certain problems like pollution, it makes them double threatened with it.
Yeah, and all of our pollutants end up in the water. Gravity takes everything down, so it's going to get to their breeding sites, and that's where their offspring are, and they're going to be susceptible right when they're born.
Katy, I feel like your city water people need to have a Save The Frogs thing, or save the tadpoles in particular.
If you work with a city water department, they should definitely like frogs and spread the word about amphibians.
That's my job.
Yeah, Katy does city water education. One last thing then about amphibians in particular. So as we were just saying, because they are a little bit more susceptible with their double lifestyle, what are some of these problems in particular?
You mentioned pollution, and you mentioned some habitat loss. Is there anything else that the amphibians are facing?
Yeah, well, habitat loss, habitat destruction is number one worldwide. Seven billion, eight billion humans on the planet. Most of us live in the lowlands.
Frogs like to live in the lowlands, and we don't have many national parks down low. We like how mountains look, so our preserves are up high. And there's not many people living up there anyway.
So there's a conflict between the humans and frogs over land use. So that's definitely number one. Number two problem is a problem that is affecting the world's montane amphibian populations, frogs living, frogs and other amphibians living up in the mountains, and that's chytrid fungus, chytridiomycosis, potentially lethal skin disease of amphibians has been causing massive problems, probably about a hundred amphibian species driven to extinction just by that one organism, Batrachocytrium dendrobotitis.
So in terms of biodiversity, it's the worst disease in recorded history.
That's crazy. And so many people don't even know about it.
Yeah, that's true. Even in this day of age of disease awareness, people are not thinking too much about amphibian diseases. And so that's a big problem for amphibians up in the mountains.
And then the other problems, there's four main other issues, threats to amphibians, global warming and climate change. Amphibians are dependent on water, and if they don't have as much water as they need, then they're going to have trouble reproducing. That's another difference I didn't mention before between the amphibians and reptiles is reptiles, when they have eggs, they're hard-shelled eggs, and amphibians don't have that protective shell on the outside, and their eggs can dry up.
That's why amphibians tend to be active in the rainy season and hang out in wet places. So if things dry up, then the amphibians are going to have trouble. Infectious diseases, I mentioned, pollution and pesticides.
We talked about over-harvesting for the pet and food trade. So that's taking amphibians out of the wild to eat them. Probably about a billion frogs get eaten every year, wild-caught frogs.
Which, again, I think is a thing that people don't think that much about, because I guess it depends on where you live.
It does. But also people in America don't think of Americans as being big frog legs. Eaters.
There's a long history of frog leg eating in the USA. So, you know, it's a lot of places in the world. Currently, I'm in Columbia.
People here don't eat frogs. But most places that you go in the world, there is, you know, frog eating going on. So there's that.
One problem here, though, is that people take poison dart frogs out. Of course, frogs are under threat from pet owners or pet vendors who sell them. And so I'll say, you know, best not have a pet frog.
If you do make sure that it was not wild caught and do a little bit or a lot of research into it. And then the other big problem is invasive species. So our biggest problem for frogs in the US probably is an American frog, the American bullfrog.
But there being the American bullfrog is native to the eastern half of the USA and Canada. And the problem is that they get introduced all around the West Coast and imported in by the millions from Asia and other places, but primarily from Asia. The American bullfrogs are the number one frog raised for food at frog farms.
Frog farms are proliferating because it's probably a lot cheaper to sell a farm raised frog than to have to go out and catch a frog. So we've got lots of frogs being imported into the US. And these American bullfrogs carry chytrid fungus.
They don't usually die from it, but they'll be heavily infected. They're kept in buckets with, you know, like 30 frogs in a bucket. They're raised in ponds that may have thousands of frogs crawling all over each other.
So it's perfect for cheese breeding conditions. And then the American bullfrogs are the largest frogs native to the USA. So they have a large mouth.
Frogs are gape-limited predators. They'll eat whatever living thing when they're adult. They're carnivores.
They'll eat whatever they can put in their mouth. So these American bullfrogs get loose and can eat the second largest frog from America, which is the California red-legged frog, an endangered frog in California. That was nearly eaten to extinction by the California goldmine.
That's crazy. And I know that the tiger salamander, too, has been like a pretty big invasive species problem, right? Like the tiger salamanders introduced out west.
Yeah, in California, there's the California tiger salamander, and they're hybridizing with the tiger salamander that was introduced from the central US, I guess, primarily, maybe eastern US, too. And that's kind of degrading the genetics of the California tiger salamanders.
Gotcha.
Yeah, so let's go ahead and we'll pivot back a little bit to Save the Frogs organization. So you talked a little bit about education, but let's dive in a little bit more into some of the specific initiatives. So what specifically to Save the Frogs do as far as education goes, and how do you get the word out to people all around the world about amphibians and the need for conservation?
All right. Well, we have a lot of education programs, and I think the number one way we get the word out, we've got a website, savethefrogs.com. It's got about a thousand pages of info.
We've always got new articles going up there, new videos being added. And so I encourage everyone, go check out savethefrogs.com, just start surfing around or even go click the Academy button at the top. We've got Save the Frogs Academy online courses, and there's a button there.
You can get free 28 days full access to all the Save the Frogs Academy online courses. If you like what you see, you can apply for a Save the Frogs scholarship and get a, that will give you a Save the Frogs membership, or if you have funds to just donate to Save the Frogs, that's appreciated too. Become a Save the Frogs member and get access to all those courses.
But even outside of Save the Frogs Academy, just the public portions of our site, we've got tons of info up there. And other things we do, let's see, as I said, I've given about 450 educational presentations since I started Save the Frogs. We've got a lot going on online.
This morning, I gave a presentation, and it was a grants discussion. We give out grants. We've given out about $120,000 worth of grants to amphibian conservationists in many countries.
We're about to give out about $10,000. So I was announcing some of the winners and educating the grantees or the applicants about the differences between, you know, what was the difference between the grants that won and the grants that didn't. And so I'm always trying to educate people, especially or not especially, but definitely within the Save the Frogs community.
If there's people and they're going to be involved with Save the Frogs, I want them to have as much knowledge and success as possible. Other things, we've got eco tours. So we take people out for 10 to 12 days, usually introduce them to the local amphibian wildlife.
We've done those in Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Belize. Currently, we're organizing a trip to Zambia. Well, December of this year, and working on a trip to Ecuador, to a new location for next year, and possibly even the Pantanal, the world's largest swamp in Brazil.
So yeah, those are like intense 10 to 12 days of amphibian education. It's also just vacation, but you're going to be nonstop learning a lot about local wildlife and local culture and eco tourism, and how it can benefit the local communities and protect the wildlife and forests of those areas. Other things we've got going on, Save the Frogs Day, this April 28th is the 15th annual Save the Frogs Day.
And I started Save the Frogs Day because I wanted to get students and teachers and politicians thinking about frogs. We've gotten Save the Frogs Day officially recognized in a number of states and major cities in the USA and Canada, with politicians getting educated. Hopefully they care a little bit more about amphibians after that.
We've got the Save the Frogs art contest. It goes year round, so whenever you're listening to this, you can enter the art contest. Though the judging for each year takes place, the deadline is November 1st.
So if you want to get your art in this year, get it in by November 1st. And a lot of teachers and students, schools take place in that, and we can see in their art that a lot of those students learn a lot about frogs because you can see the threats to frogs showing up in their artwork. We've had a Save the Frogs poetry contest that had participants in 75 plus countries, and we will be reviving that.
I created the submission form the other day, so that's coming back. You can go check out savethefrogs.com/art is where you'll find the art contest, savethefrogs.com/poetry. You can go find a lot of poetry there, and that's where the entry information will soon be.
If you want to organize a Save the Frogs Day event, my main goal is to get people who care enough about amphibians to go out into their communities and hold a Save the Frogs Day event. We've had about 1,500 known events take place around the world. That's one of the things that we give out grants for.
We have an actual Save the Frogs Day grant for groups that are holding Save the Frogs Day events. They can apply for those.
Yeah, and it's definitely not too late to organize something. It's at the end of the month, but that should be some time to be able to put together something.
And even if you can't put together your own event, you could come join Save the Frogs at the Meridotia National Wildlife Refuge in Illinois. We'll be there April 27th and 28th. Two full days of wetland education and restoration.
We're going to be building a wetland there for Illinois coarse frogs. We've got Tom Bebeghauser of the Shell-Toei Environmental Education Coalition. He is a, perhaps, the world's wetland expert when it comes to building wetlands for wildlife and especially amphibians.
He's built probably 2,500 wetlands in his life, and he's trained up a lot of Save the Frogs people in wetland education. So that's with the US. Fish and Wildlife Service.
So we encourage everyone to come join us. Free event. You can go to savefrogs.com/wetlands-illinois to learn about that.
So all sorts of different educational strategies.
Yes. And you've taken part in a course that we held in the past with Save the Frogs Academy. So, you know, maybe you can tell tell your listeners what what that was all about.
Yeah. Yeah. It was really when I worked at the zoo, they were good enough to give me enough so that I could join in.
They they funded it for me. And, yeah, I got to take all sorts of webinars. So it was all online, which was really good, especially for someone like me who didn't have a lot of like extra time.
And I was working at the time. So, you know, just joining in different webinars, listening to different experts, talking about different topics along amphibian conservation. So talking about the aspects of wetland restoration, about legislation initiatives, about the invasive species issues.
I mean, really, it was just like a catch all for like crash course, amphibian conservation. What do you need to know? How can you get involved?
And here's all the different avenues that you can like attack this at. It was really interesting and it was good networking too. I did it with another person, so we talked about things afterwards.
Yeah, I recommend it, especially if you're interested. I would say it would be really good for anyone either interested in just starting into this field of, do I want to get involved with conservation, amphibian in particular, and kind of like suss out. I think it'd be really beneficial for like college students or young adults that are still trying to figure out.
But even people who are thinking about changing jobs or not even just changing jobs, but just want to get into amphibian conservation because they want to be able to do something to help. I'd recommend it for everyone, but I definitely think it'd be very beneficial for younger people who are just trying to figure out how can I attack this problem and how can I get involved. So with that, we talked about the education aspect.
We talked about ecotourism. So real quick, let's just touch on the habitat restoration. So you guys give out grants for certain things.
Can you tell us a little bit more about these restoration, creation, and protection projects?
Yeah, as I said before, habitat destruction is the number one problem that amphibians face worldwide. So if we restore habitat and create habitat and protect habitat, that's one of the best things that we can do to help amphibians. And in 2014, we started up a wetland program to get people outside with us building wetlands and teaching them everything that we know about how to build wetlands.
And so we've held many events throughout California and Arizona, Kentucky, now Illinois, and on top of just providing education to people, we like to have these actual events that go on where people can join us, because that's going to be the best way to really learn all about building a wetland. Now, the wetlands that we build, they can be very large. They can be 20, 30 meters across, but you don't need that much space.
If you are a landowner, you only need three, four feet across, can be plenty of habitat for frogs depending on where you live. So it doesn't take a lot of land. And in Save the Frogs Academy, we have a wetlands course.
And one part of that specifically is how to build a backyard wetland. Doesn't take a lot of money. It just takes some land that you're allowed to build on.
So I encourage people to go check that out. And you don't need any heavy equipment. You can just, some shovels is pretty much what you need to get going with a wetland that size.
I think here in Maryland too, I'm pretty sure it's a tax credit. To build a wetland in Maryland, it's a tax credit. So Maryland is for sure trying to get people to create these wetland habitats in their own backyards.
That's good to know.
Yeah, yeah. And all the students here in Maryland, well, I think it's entirely Maryland, yeah. All students have to do student service learning hours, so they have to do a certain amount of volunteer hours.
So a project like that would be a really good way for students to get their volunteer hours in. Or like the Eagle Scouts are always looking for stuff to do.
Yeah, if they can get their own school to allow them to build something on the property, you know, get the science teacher involved, then that's great. And that kind of comes down to the culture at the school. Some have had problems with some schools where we were set up to build there.
And then the, you know, superintendent, who doesn't care anything about the environment, you know, says, now you can't do that here because, you know, that would be more work for him or who knows what. So it kind of depends, but you have to try. And that's, if you're not the landowner, that's usually the biggest impediment is just getting the permission to build.
So once you have the permission to build, then, you know, the actual being out there digging and creating the wetland is not so difficult.
Yeah, that's awesome. So many of us realize that a big piece of effective conservation is policy change, for sure. Yeah, have you guys had like any sort of legislation that say the frogs has played a direct role in passing?
And what specifically or kind of anything that you have in the works coming down to that you know of?
Okay, yeah, we have the city and county of Santa Cruz, California banned the importation and sale possession of American bullfrogs. That was about 11 years ago or so. We were happy with that.
And we have been working statewide in California. It hasn't gone through yet. Unfortunately, it was actually voted to pass to stop issuing permits for the importation of the American bullfrogs.
It passed three to two that they would stop the permits, but then there was controversy. The people who like to eat and sell the bullfrogs were able to get another vote to happen. And since then, they've been giving out the permits.
So I've been on a stakeholder group for years. It goes at government speed, which is very, very slow in California. But we have had other successes.
Governor Jerry Brown of California voted or signed off on legislation that we helped get to make the California red-legged frog the official state frog of California. And that actually got going based on some kids in Salton City, California. And they wanted to help out frogs.
Most of them were from farm worker families. Not a lot going on out in the desert in California. They wanted to help out and sent a letter to their assembly member.
And eventually, some of those kids came up to Sacramento, California, and spoke in front of the politicians. We won that first vote, sorry, 8-0. The next vote was 52-8, which is pretty good in this day and age.
We're right down the line. Yeah, frogs are bringing people together.
Especially if you can get kids out there and say no to the kids. Our biggest legislative success was the US. Fish and Wildlife Service listing 201 amphibian species under the Lacey Act.
So we submitted a petition along with the Center for Biological Diversity because Betrachocytrium salamandra vorans, chytrid fungus of amphibians, was causing die-offs of amphibians in Europe, and we did not want those amphibians entering the US. And I recently checked up with the US. FWS about that, and that reduced the importation of those species by 99%.
Whoa, that's awesome.
Yeah, and there's still not been, to the best of my knowledge, the Betrachicatrium salamander vorans detected in USA salamanders. So that's really good. Other things, I wasn't quite so involved.
We were part of a lot. I mean, usually there's various organizations involved. It's not usually one organization, but for many years, we were working to protect Tesla Park in California.
That's about an hour or so east of San Francisco. And the California State Parks has an off-highway motor vehicle division, and their mission is to make sure that people have lots of places to ride their off-highway vehicles, which are incredibly damaging.
Those are like ATVs.
They completely rip up the land, and they wanted to open Tesla Park, which has five endangered species, to off-highway vehicles. And after many, many years, that project got abandoned. So that was a good victory.
Then there's one more I can think of, is that I guess it was part legislative and part just dealing with the corporations that were threatening to cause the problems. In Lake Erie in Ontario, Canada, the company wanted to build an 11 or so story high-rise apartments and restaurants on top of Fowler's Toad habitat. There's only three populations of Fowler's Toads in Canada, and they were going to build right on top of them.
We had Save the Frogs Academy online class, and at each of the classes, we would talk about how to protect those toads, and then the homework for the students would be to do something related to that campaign. And eventually, this was about 10 years ago, the developers canceled the project because there was so much controversy around the unit that they were not able to pre-sell their apartments.
Well, I remember...
And those toads are protected still.
That's great. I was just going to say, from the Academy, I definitely remember learning about what mitigation is, because I didn't know that before taking the Save the Frogs Academy and all the ins and outs of that. Right, just thinking like, oh, well, if I built here, I can just make it somewhere else, but that doesn't help the ones that are there.
Yeah, and sometimes the mitigation is not always sufficient. I'll tell people out there, there's a whole lot of money in wetland mitigation. There's a lot of groups that just buy land and restore it into wetlands, because there's so much money coming in from companies that are destroying wetlands, and they have to pay somebody to build those wetlands.
So if you want to build wetlands, then there is a financial path for that.
Interesting.
I mean, there's plenty. I mentioned success of legislation or legislative campaigns we've had, but we've had plenty that have not been successful. And one of those is Atrazine, which is the second most commonly used herbicide on the planet.
Most commonly detected pesticide in US groundwater, rainwater, tap water, and there's billions of dollars involved and tons of lobbying from the industries that want to use Atrazine and buy Atrazine and sell Atrazine. And I spoke at the US EPA three times about that. And that was, you know, it's difficult doing legislation because it's dependent.
I can educate people, and all I need is people in front of me, and I can make sure I succeed with that. But with legislation, you've got to deal with governments generally, and most of them are bureaucratic, and they won't want to change things because change is going to offend somebody. So it can be difficult.
And yeah, there's plenty of chemicals that are known to be harmful that they just keep giving out permits for.
I'm glad that here, again, here in Maryland, a lot of people are very against, like, spraying for mosquitoes and things like that.
Yeah, we have a page up on our site, if anyone is interested in mosquito spraying, maybe they're doing it in your community and you don't want them doing it. You can go to savefrogs.com, go to the search bar in the site, type in Santa Clara, that's a county in California. And I've written them letters about their mosquito spraying program.
You can read those on the site. Feel free to use it as a template for contacting your county.
Oh, that's great. So we did mention, so April is National Amphibian Month. And of course, your organization created Save the Frogs Day.
And you've already said a little bit about what it is. Is there anything specifically, is there a list on your site of all the events that are happening around the world for Save the Frogs Day? Or is there a way for people to register their events on your site?
Yeah, go to savethefrogs.com/day, and that's your place to start with everything. We do have a page, savethefrogs.com/day. dash register, and we encourage you.
If you are holding an event, we definitely want to know about it, and we can help you out with your event. We can promote your event. We can put a page up on the site about your event, and go to savethefrogs.com/day.
And this week we will be listing out various events that are happening. The link's already up there for the Illinois Wetlands event, so if you want to attend that.
All right, so final question here. Do you have any final inspiring words for our listeners that will encourage them to hop into action? Really, Laura, hop into action.
You had to, didn't you? Yeah.
Yeah, I think the most important thing to know is that everyone can make a difference. There's tons of problems in the world. There's tons of environmental problems, but there's a lot of humans.
There's smart people out there. There's people who are inspired and take action, and there's a lot of education out there and ways to get involved. Go to savethefrogs.com.
We have a how to help page. Just pick one thing from that page and do it, and you're helping out and then just keep on going.
Well, we cannot thank you enough for being on here. We were so excited to get your response saying that you would be on. So thank you so much, Kerry, for being on.
Is there any other, any last pushes that you want for our listeners to do to promote anything like that before we let you go?
Yeah, spread the word about Save the Frogs. We're at Save the Frogs on all the major social media channels. So go follow Save the Frogs.
I'd love it if you go to savefrogs.com/newsletter, sign up for our electronic newsletter. I write the newsletter, send it out about once a week, and that's the best way to stay on top of everything. When the time comes that you're inspired to donate to an environmental cause, we would appreciate your donation.
And thank you, Katy and Laura, for having me on. It's been a pleasure to talk about frogs and spread the word.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you again.
And I don't even know what we're going to be doing for the next episode for next week. So I guess just tune in and you'll be just as surprised as I am as to what we're doing next week. Make sure you guys follow us on our social media as well.
Go head over to Patreon and support us there so we can keep interviewing guests and keep having more folks on.
Yeah. And hopefully now you know a little bit more, maybe even more than you wanted to know, but that you'll be inspired, especially about amphibian conservation. We'll talk to you all next week.
Bye, everybody.