Male and female mountain chicken frogs that were sole survivors of deadly disease are hoped to begin breeding on Montserrat for the first time since 2009
Monday 4 July 201612.56 BSTLast modified on Monday 4 July 201616.26 BST
The last two remaining wild mountain chicken frogs living on Montserrat have been reunited, and are hoped to begin breeding on the Caribbean island for the first time since 2009.
Last month, a project took the last female and relocated her into the territory of the 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. There are less than 100 left in the wild.
The frogs were living 700m apart among the boulders of a steep, fast-flowing stream in the rainforest at a site known as Fairy Walk. The male had been heard calling for several weeks but after 10 nights of hour-long hikes to the site, the team of conservationists was getting worried that they hadn’t found the female.
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