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CBC (Ottawa, Ontario) 12 January 11 Six frogs that haven't been seen in more than 14 years have been rediscovered in Haiti.
Six frogs that haven't been seen in more than 14 years have been rediscovered in Haiti.
The frogs were found in one of the remote mountains in the country's southwest in October, Conservation International said Wednesday.
The non-profit group has been funding expeditions around the world since July to search for 100 species of amphibians that haven't been seen in more than a decade.
The six frogs found in Massif de la Hotte, one of the last remaining patches of native forest in the struggling nation, include:
- The Hispaniolan ventriloqual frog, last seen in 1991, which produces chirps that are projected so they sound as though they come from a different location than the frog itself.
- Mozart's frog, last seen in 1991, named because an audiospectrogram of its call resembles musical notes.
- The La Hotte glanded frog, last seen in 1991, which has unusual sapphire-blue eyes.
- The Macaya breast-spot frog, last seen in 1991, which is one of the smallest frogs in the world, at just 15.1 millimetres long.
- The Hispaniolan crowned frog, last seen in 1991, named for crown-like bumps at the back of its head.
- The Macaya burrowing frog, a black-eyed frog last seen in 1996, but never before in the part of Haiti where it was found.
The expedition was led by Robin Moore, amphibian conservation officer at Conservation International.
He said the massive earthquake that struck Haiti a year ago Wednesday, killing 230,000 people and leaving 800,000 homeless, has indirectly threatened many rare amphibian species in the struggling nation.
Haiti is home to 49 native species of amphibians, many of them very rare, including 15 that are found nowhere else in the world, Conservation International reports.
Less than two per cent of Haiti's original forest remains, and a lot of rare frogs are confined to two small patches of just a few square kilometres each: Massif de la Hotte, in the country's southwest, and Massif de la Selle, in the southeast near the captial of Port-au-Prince.
In the wake of the earthquake, many people fled nearby Port-au-Prince for rural villages near Massif de la Selle and even Massif de la Hotte, Moore said.
"The more people you have, the more pressure you have on the forests," he added. "One fear was that this would push it over the edge - that these resources would just be completely stripped."
Haiti's rural population clears forests for subsistence farming and to make charcoal as their main fuel, he said.
Nevertheless, Conservation International chose to visit Haiti at this time because of all the international attention and aid focused there as a result of the earthquake.
Prior to the earthquake, Moore said, the group had spent four years working in Haiti, but had trouble engaging the international community there. That has changed.
"I think actually we have a window of opportunity to really get conservation into the conversation about rebuilding and recovering Haiti," he said.
He added that conservation efforts could really improve the quality of life for the population because of the nature of many of their problems.
"They have problems obviously with floods, with droughts, soil erosion - you know, a lot of the rivers run brown. That's really a result of the environmental degradation."
In fact, the situation seems to be improving now for the forests, as rebuilding in Port-au-Prince has lured many people back from the countryside, Moore said. People are also recognizing that Massif de la Selle is an important watershed for Port-au-Prince, and some efforts are being made to reforest it.
Frogs are sensitive to environmental stress so they are often used as indicators of healthy ecosystems. The rediscovery of six species in Haiti is a sign of hope, Moore said.
"Their survival shows us that not all is lost on Haiti - we have something to protect and grow from."
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2011/01/12/science-frogs-haiti-earthquake.html

BBC (London, UK0 11 January 11 Frogs survive on Haiti's bare hillsides (Richard Black)
A conservation expedition to the deforested hills of Haiti, struck by a major earthquake a year ago, has found frog species unseen for 20 years.
In just eight days of searching in the few forest fragments left, researchers found 25 of Haiti's 49 known species.
They hope this will focus attention on conserving the few percent that remain of the nation's once abundant forest.
The 12 January 2010 earthquake killed an estimated 230,000 people and left about 1.2 million homeless.
Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, with much of its population eking out a subsistence living on farming and charcoal-making.
Poverty was one of the reasons cited in the quake's aftermath for why it had such a huge impact.
Even before the upheaval, conservation was in a dire state with so much of the country's natural habitat having been cleared away.
There were concerns that people moving away from the stricken coastal zone would increase pressure on the few remaining pieces of forest.
But this appears not have been the case - at least in the forests of the Massif de la Hotte and Massif de la Selle.
"Within Haiti, very few people have been to this area, which is one of the reasons we wanted to do this - to highlight what is still there," said Robin Moore of Conservation International, who led the expedition.
"If we talk to people in [the capital] Port-au-Prince about conservation, they shake their heads and ask 'what are we going to conserve?' - but we showed that there is good forest still, and it contains some unique species."
The expedition was not a complete success, with no sightings of the principal target - the La Selle grass frog, which was last seen 25 years ago and is listed as possibly extinct.
But among the species that were seen were five that were last recorded in 1991.
They include the Hispaniolan ventriloquial frog, named because of its call.
Consisting of a rapid seven-note sequence of chirps, the animal appears to project its voice into the forest.
The Macaya burrowing frog is one of several clinging on in the Massif de la Hotte Mozart's frog also aquired its name from its call, a whistling sound that emerges at dawn and dusk.
And the Macaya breast-spotted frog is one of the world's smallest, with adults about the size of a grape.
However, the intent of the conservationists involved is not merely to protect the amphibians.
"Haiti's problems didn't start with the earthquake - it was pretty desperate before, and a lot of the country's problems stem from environmental degradation," Dr Moore told BBC News.
"So I think we need to get that on the agenda and do things better; and I think we can offer a better quality of life through investing in sustainable practices such as shade-grown coffee and things that conserve the environment.
"Right now, a lot of people are growing cash crops and the soil degrades, and they have to eat into the few remaining bits of forest - and that can only go on for some time before you cut down the last tree.
"So we're using the frogs to highlight what they still have; but ultimately it's the forest we're interested in preserving, because if they don't save that, they've got nothing to grow from."
The expedition to Haiti in October was run by Conservation International and the Amphibian Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
It was an adjunct to a larger project aiming to rediscover amphibian species thought to be extinct - a project that has already turned up a Mexican salamander not seen since its discovery in 1941, a frog from the Ivory Coast last observed in 1967, and another frog from Democratic Republic of Congo not seen since 1979.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12164264

Ventriloqual Frog, Eleutherodactylus dolomedes
Mozart’s Frog, Eleutherodactylus amadeus
Macaya Burrowing Frog, Eleutherodactylus parapelates
La Hotte Glanded Frog, Eleutherodactylus glandulifer
Hispaniola Crowned Frog, Eleutherodactylus corona
Juvenile Macaya Breast-spot Frog, Eleutherodactylus thorectes