Haiti on brink of mass extinctions

Frogs are nature's early warning system

November 2010: Haiti is on the brink of an era of mass extinctions similar to the time when dinosaurs and many other species suddenly disappeared from the Earth, a leading biologist is warning.

Announcing the at the establishment of a rescue programme for Haiti's threatened frogs and other species, including captive-breeding and gene-preservation efforts, Blair Hedges, Professor of Biology at Penn State University said: ‘During the next few decades, many Haitian species of plants and animals will become extinct because the forests where they live, which originally covered the entire country, are nearly gone.


‘Frogs are especially vulnerable, so their decline is a biological early-warning signal of a dangerously deteriorating environment, just as a dying canary is an early-warning sign of dangerously deteriorating air in a coal mine,' added Hedges, who is also one of the world's foremost authorities on amphibians and reptiles. ‘When frogs start disappearing, other species will follow and the Haitian people will suffer, as well, from this environmental catastrophe.'

One species already breeding in captivity
Hedges recently relocated ten critically endangered species of frogs from Haiti to a captive-breeding programme at Philadelphia Zoo. One of these species already has begun breeding, laying eggs, and producing hatchlings. Hedges has discovered at least five new frog species during three expeditions to Haiti this year, but he was not able to find two species that may now be extinct because they have not been seen there for 25 years. His scientific descriptions of the new species will be published in future issues of research journals.

The rescue mission led by Hedges is part of a new effort supported by the National Science Foundation to determine which species of amphibians and reptiles currently survive in Haiti, to pinpoint their locations, to discover any new species that previously were not documented scientifically, to relocate live populations of frogs for captive breeding, and to deep-freeze cells at Penn State.

Deep freezing some frogs in case they die out in Haiti
‘Captive breeding and cryobanking are two efforts to preserve the species in case they become extinct in Haiti,' said Hedges, who is one of the few scientists worldwide who have established cryobanking programmes in their labs for endangered frogs and other species.


Cryobanking involves the preservation of cells and DNA in liquid nitrogen that will permit whole-animal cloning, if necessary, in the future. ‘These are time-consuming and costly backup plans to save species, normally reserved for those species closest to extinction,' Hedges said. ‘The goal is to release offspring of rescued frogs in Haiti if and when their forest habitat improves.'

Hedges and the Philadelphia Zoo also are working with the Haitian government and non-governmental agencies to train Haitians in this conservation research so that they can develop the capacity to breed these species in Haiti.

Third of world's frogs face extinction - but 92 per cent of Haiti's frogs are threatened

Frog species have been disappearing worldwide during the past ten to 20 years, and one-third of the Earth's 6,000 frog species are now threatened with extinction. But in Haiti, 92 per cent of Haiti's 50 frog species are threatened - the highest percentage of any country in the world.

‘We found that as many as 26 species occur together in the isolated mountain forests of southwest Haiti,' said Hedges, ‘greatly increasing the threat of mass extinctions when the forests there are cut down.' Of the 50 frog species in Haiti, two-thirds - 30 species - live only in Haiti and do not occur in the neighboring Dominican Republic.

Haiti's lush forests have become a lunar landscape

‘Less than one per cent of the original forest is left in Haiti, which is a lower percentage than in any other country that I know of,' Hedges added. ‘There definitely is no other place in the western half of the world - and some scientists would argue in the entire world - where the extinction threat is greater than in Haiti."

Hedges explained that the forests of Haiti are disappearing because the trees were being cut down to produce charcoal for the 10-million Haitian people who have few other sources of cooking fuel.

‘Forests from some entire mountains now have been removed completely. In places,' said Hedges. ‘It looks like a lunar landscape, with nearly all the soil washed away and only the rocks and some weeds left behind."

‘The pressure for cutting down the forests is coming from a whole island nation of people needing cooking fuel - a problem requiring economic and possibly engineering solutions and needing the help of major international conservation organisations and government agencies,' said Philippe Bayard, President of the Audubon Society of Haiti and collaborator with Hedges in efforts to save Haiti's biodiversity. ‘Unless effective help arrives soon, it is inevitable that there will be mass extinctions, and I think they are in progress.'


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