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DAILY NEWS (New York, New York) 18 August 10 Bronx Zoo ships 100 rare Kihansi spray toads to Tanzania to help create a new colony (Barry Paddock)
The cargo wasn't just precious - it was almost extinct.
An official from the Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo flew to Tanzania last week with some seriously exotic carry-on luggage: 100 rare, tiny toads.
The Kihansi spray toad has vanished from its native habitat, and scientists hope to create a new colony by importing some from U.S. zoos.
"It's an amazing feeling," said Jim Breheny, director of the Bronx Zoo.
Last Tuesday, their handler, Alyssa Borek, packed 50 toads from the Bronx Zoo and 50 from the Toledo Zoo into plastic deli containers after swaddling them in paper towels soaked in purified water.
They were loaded into two cardboard boxes that Borek hauled onto a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines jet for the trip from Kennedy Airport to Africa.
She delivered them to a state-of-the-art propagation center. The goal is to eventually move them to the Kihansi Gorge, where the Tanzanian government has installed sprinklers in an attempt to recreate the toads' habitat.
The toads were discovered in 1998, living on less than five acres of a spray zone created by waterfalls in the gorge.
The 2000 opening of a hydroelectric dam, which provides a third of Tanzania's electricity, reduced the flow of the waterfalls, eliminating 90% of the mist.
The toads began to dry out and fall ill. Before they were declared extinct in the wild, scientists collected a colony of them and split them among a handful of zoos.
The Bronx Zoo pumps 1,500 gallons of mist a day to the toads, who are on display in the Reptile House. Food, water and air is carefully purified.
Breheny called it an "incredible commitment" that he and Toledo Zoo officials hope will pay off halfway across the world. "We both have worked very hard for a successful end to the story," he said.
Bronx Zoo ships 100 rare Kihansi spray toads to Tanzania

DAILY NEWS (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) 24 August 10 Is Kihansi Environment Suitable for the Toads? (Abdulwakil Saiboko)
Dar Es Salaam: It was hectic at the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) as government officials and those from the National Environment Management Council (NEMC) as well as a number of zoologists turned up to receive the country's precious tiny, fabulous and unique world creatures -the Kihansi Spray Toads (KST) as they arrived from the United States about two weeks ago.
The incident will go down the history because of the fact that after much talk, plans and Tanzanian patience for a decade now, their valuable amphibians are back home. They landed in a KLM plane at midnight on Wednesday, August 11. "We were very much worried because, this was the first time in the world history that species which were about to face total extinction were taken to another country where they regenerate and returned back home.
Our fear was mainly on our capacity to make them survive here," said NEMC Acting Director General, Ms Anna Maembe. Some 499 toads, scientifically known as Nectophrynoides Asperginis, were taken to the United States in the year 2000 to save them from the danger of becoming extinct as construction of a hydro power dam at the Lower Kihansi kicked off.
The Toads had once lived at the spray zone around the Kihansi and Mhalala waterfalls in the southern Udzungwa Mountains about a decade ago. In the US, the toads were being kept in the zoos at Bronx and Toledo in Ohio where scientists took care of them and are said to have multiplied to 6,000. Only the first batch of 100 toads arrived at JNIA. "We expected to receive these wonderful creatures early last month but some logistics delayed us. We, however, received them on Wednesday night and they are now kept at the University of Dar es Salaam's laboratory before we take them back to their natural milieu in Kihansi," Ms Maembe explained.
Ms Maembe noted that the 100 toads which have been received were still alive at the laboratory. "That is indeed a great achievement so far," she said. Ms Maembe gives credit to zoologists at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM) in collaboration with their counterparts at the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) for constructing a modern laboratory, by giving expertise advice and for taking care of the toads.
"We were at a total loss in 1998 when we saw these creatures go into extinction and we had no knowledge of keeping them in captive. We therefore thank the US Wildlife Conservation Society for keeping our beloved toads to this moment when we are able to do it by ourselves," she said. According to her, the toads will stay at the university for six months after which they will be gradually shifted to Kihansi where they will be under expert supervision for a while to see how they are able to cope with the local situation before they are released to lead their own life.
Ms Maembe said further that experts at SUA had improved the environment at Kihansi making it suitable for the toads. She however, maintained that still more experiments needed to be done to be assured of their total safety. Dr Joshua Malago of SUA's Department of Pathology said all the necessary precautions have been taken, including installation of modern equipment that can detect various diseases that attack the species. During construction of the Lower Kihansi Dam, the population of these rare species declined due to reduction in the amount of wetland habitat receiving natural spray.
A spray irrigation system was installed which saw the toad's population bounce back. However, three years later the Kihansi Spray Toads population was attacked by a fungal disease called chytridiomycosis that threatened to wipe the rare species from the face of the world.After receiving the toads,the government promised to make sure that all of them survive and are returned to theirnatural milieu.
The Permanent Secretary in the Vice- President's Office, Ms Ruth Mollel said "It is indeed a memorable time for us to receive back this first batch of the toads. The target is to receive 1,000 of them the bigger challenge ahead is to make sure that they are successfully reintroduced to their natural habitat in Kihansi." She said there was no need to worry about the toads' survival, as the government has invested much in training its experts in amphibian husbandry at SUA and University of Dar es Salaam.
She challenged the experts to put all their knowledge and efforts in making sure that the toads continue to survive. Understanding that there was something wrong with environmental impact analysis at the Lower Kihansi Power Plant, the PS noted that the incident has also helped the government to ensure proper mitigation measures are taken during construction of such projects. Wild Animal Keeper at the Wildlife Conservation Society Bronx Zoo in US, Ms Alyssa Borek who accompanied the toads back home, said that the 'fabulous creatures' were doing fine, eating, playing, making noise and mating as ever.
She was assigned to spend two weeks at the modern laboratory at the University of Dar es Salaam where the toads are kept. UDSM Deputy Vice- Chancellor (Administration), Prof Yunus Mgaya, said that the university has benefited a lot from the return of the toads in terms of capacity building as well as through acquisition of teaching materials on amphibian husbandry.
"Let me promise that the University in collaboration with other stakeholders will use all its expertise to ensure that establishment of the captive breeding population of KST in Tanzania becomes successful and that enough toads are available for reintroduction to the wild," he said. He said that, two UDSM employees were trained in the US in amphibian husbandry and that were currently taking the lead in looking after the toads at the captive facility.
Is Kihansi Environment Suitable for the Toads