A new study finds that frogs, toads, salamanders and other amphibians in the U.S. are dying off so quickly that they could disappear from half of their habitats in the next 20 years. For some of the more endangered species, they could lose half of their habitats in as little as six years. The nine-year [...]

Don’t feel bad if you’ve never seen a caecilian, let alone don’t know how to pronounce the word. These rare, legless amphibians—which look like a cross between a worm and a snake—spend most of their time underground, far from the prying eyes of scientists and other humans. Although some of the 190 or so known [...]

Last year I wrote somewhere around 150 articles about endangered species. I could have easily written closer to 1,000. One blog simply can’t cover all of threatened species around the world, as hard as I try. But I hate letting news items (not to mention species) fall through the cracks. And so, here is the [...]

Two American zoos have helped to save an African amphibian from extinction. The Kihansi spray toad (Nectophrynoides asperginis) was declared extinct in the wild in 2009 after its only habitat, the waterfalls of Kihansi Gorge in Tanzania, dried up following the establishment of a nearby hydroelectric dam. But this month 2,000 toads returned to Kihansi, [...]

The frog-killing fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which causes the disease chytridiomycosis, has been blamed for about 100 amphibian extinctions around the globe since it was first observed in 1998, but clear information on exactly how it spreads has remained a mystery. Now a team of scientists working in Belgium have come up with one potential [...]

And then there was one. The last known Rabb’s fringe-limbed tree frog (Ecnomiohyla rabborum) now lives by himself at Zoo Atlanta in Georgia after the zoo euthanized the only other member of its species. The euthanized frog, another male, had been experiencing a “marked decline in health and behavior” according to a Zoo Atlanta news [...]

Santa Cruz County in California could soon become the first county in the U.S. to ban the import, sale and possession of American bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana). Last week, Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors Chairman Mark W. Stone sent a letter to the board urging it to enact a ban in 2012. Stone’s request followed [...]

“In my 24 years in the zoo business, this is one of the most exciting periods I’ve been through so far,” says Jeff Ettling, curator of herpetology and aquatics at the Saint Louis Zoo. He’s talking about the birth of 185 baby Ozark hellbender salamanders (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis bishopi) at the zoo’s Ron Goellner Center for [...]

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) this week granted the Ozark hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis bishopi) protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) but made the unusual decision not to declare critical habitat for the rare, giant salamanders because, it said, doing so could open it to threats from those who would illegally collect the [...]

Frog legs are still an amazingly popular food item around the world, including here in the U.S. According to a new report, an average of 2,280 metric tons of frog legs are imported into this country each year—that’s the equivalent of somewhere between 450 million and 1.1 billion frogs. Another 2,216 metric tons of live [...]