Press Release
Seattle, Washington- (4/7/2016)-Honduras Amphibian
Rescue & Conservation Center (HARCC),
An
international team of scientists, zookeepers, and artists are racing to save three endangered species of frogs from a disease outbreak in
Honduras. This rescue effort aims to protect the fragile biodiversity of
Cusuco National Park in northwestern Honduras, a cloud forest ranked among the
worlds’ “top 100 most irreplaceable sites” from an analysis of over 173,000
protected areas. Now, chytrid fungus, a globally emerging pathogen,
threatens to push Cusuco’s amazing frogs to the brink of extinction.
Today,
National Geographic announced a national rescue effort has been launched to
battle this disease event (National Geographic
story here)
accompanied by an Indiegogo
crowdfunding campaign to
support this massive conservation initiative. Young frogs in Cusuco are
much more likely to die from chytrid infection than their adult counterparts,
driving these species into an extinction-prone bottleneck. In response, a
biosecure amphibian rescue facility is now in construction, called the Honduras Amphibian Rescue & Conservation Center
(HARCC), where
young sick frogs can be nursed back to health, and then reintroduced to the
rainforest as stronger adults, able to breed and keep their species
alive.
Jonathan
Kolby, Director of HARCC, said, “I’m very optimistic that our rescue project will allow these endangered
species to bounce back from the brink of extinction. If this method
proves effective, then it may also assist many other amphibian conservation
efforts battling chytrid throughout Latin America.”
Kolby
recently rediscovered a frog from this same forest in Honduras that was
previously declared extinct due to chytrid (National Geographic
story here).
The HARCC team maintains hope that even species highly vulnerable to this
disease may have a brighter future if provided with enough rescue support, before
it’s too late. HARCC is now seeking additional funds to support facility
construction, and plans to become fully operational by June 2017.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!