Your Daily Dose of Climate Hope: December 24, 2024

The recovery of the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog!

In Yosemite National Park, the endangered Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog is making a successful recovery from chytrid fungus — boosted by scientists’ help.

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Reasons For Hope

Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs.

A new study in Nature reports that the endangered Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog (Rana sierrae) is making a “remarkably successful” recovery in the wake of the devastating chytrid fungus (aka “Bd”), a deadly global amphibian pandemic whose impact has been potentially worsened by climate disruption. In the last century, the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog had disappeared from 90% of its original range, with the arrival of the chytrid fungus in the mid-1900s posing a major long-term survival threat.

Then, Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs in three Californian alpine lakes started evolving resistance to the fungus. Scientists carefully translocated some of the fungus-resistant frogs to 12 other lakes in Yosemite National Park to help establish more resistant populations and safeguard the species as a whole.

Frog transport underway.

The results were spectacular, with the translocated populations growing and thriving.

“In the current study, reintroduction of resistant R. sierrae was remarkably successful in reestablishing populations in the presence of Bd. Of the 12 translocated populations, approximately 80% showed evidence of both successful reproduction and recruitment of new adults…

The relatively high survival of translocated frogs was maintained in their progeny, as expected if resistance has a genetic basis.”

— Reintroduction of resistant frogs facilitates landscape-scale recovery in the presence of a lethal fungal disease

“Fig. 2: Locations of translocated and donor R. sierrae populations.”

“The lakes are alive again, completely transformed. You literally can look down the shoreline and see 50 frogs on one side and 50 on the other and in the water you see 100 to 1,000 tadpoles.”

-Roland Knapp, biologist.

A Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog. Source.

This highly successful and admirably proactive conservation effort was made possible by grant funding and logistical support from the U.S. National Park Service. Policy makers should know that their constituents support projects like this.

Tell Congress to sustain National Park Service conservation funding!