Conservationists pin hopes of the species’ survival
on breeding the Caribbean island’s last known male and female in the wild
Wednesday 27 April 2016 10.34 BSTLast
modified on Wednesday 27 April 201615.23 BST
In what could be a fairytale ending,
conservationists are hoping to reunite the last two remaining wild mountain
chicken frogs living on Montserrat and help their species breed on the
Caribbean island for the first time since 2009.
A project led by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation
Trust will next month take the last remaining female and “translocate” her into
the territory of the last remaining male as part of a 20-year recovery plan for
the species, one of the world’s largest and rarest frogs that exists on just
two Caribbean islands, Montserrat and Dominica.
The two frogs are the island’s only known survivors
of an outbreak of the deadly chytrid fungus disease, a pandemic ravaging
amphibian populations worldwide.
Montserrat’s remaining male and female live roughly
500m apart among the boulders of a steep, fast-flowing stream in the
rainforest. Over the next few weeks, the team of conservationists will first
try to locate the male by his deep, whooping mating call, which begins as the
rains of the breeding season start to fall. Then they will try to find the
female further downstream.
Providing the two can be found, the team will move
the female into the male’s territory and set up a few artificial nests to
encourage her to stay. There will be several weeks of intense monitoring where
two conservationists will hike for an hour to and from the stream and spend
around six hours every night keeping watch on the female to make sure she
hasn’t moved back to her old home.
The ultimate hope is that over the next four months
of the breeding season, the two mate and nest, something that has never before
been observed in the wild on the island.
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