Tiny Frog is Losing Ground (Western Chorus Frog)

BY DONNA NEBENZAHL, THE GAZETTE OCTOBER 30, 2010


Agricultural land dug up for housing and farm ponds and ditches replaced by drainage systems could spell the end for a tiny frog living near the river. Only 2.5 centimetres long, the western chorus frog, Pseudacris triseriata, has three dark lines along its back and can be heard -a loud, creaking call -in early spring.

It lives no more than 250 metres from its water site, but those sites are disappearing at such a rate that in 2000, the frog was declared endangered in Quebec and in 2008, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada listed it as threatened.

"They live in the wetlands on the South Shore from Ile Perrot to Boucherville," says Tommy Montpetit, project manager at the environment information centre of Longueuil, "but they're threatened by habitat loss.

Instead of having ponds for these little frogs, we've gone to major drainage systems, so there's no water left around agricultural fields and so the frogs disappear." Montpetit is working with a number of South Shore municipalities -with help from the Fondation de la faune du Quebec and the federal habitat stewardship program -to save the tiny frog. Longueuil, for example, is working to create a "refuge faunique" where the frogs can be protected, and viewed in an educational setting.

From: HerpDigest Volume # 10 Issue # 47 11/5/10 (A Not-for-Profit Publication)