Episode 05: Rescuing the Golden Mantella with Dr. Devin Edmonds and Nasoavina Christin
In Episode 5 of Amphibian Rescue, we travel to the forests of eastern Madagascar to follow the story of the Golden Mantella (Mantella aurantiaca)—a somewhat accidental rescue, and a reminder of how much it matters to be prepared.
Dr. Devin Edmonds (Amphibian Ark) and Nasoavina Christin (Association Mitsinjo) take us behind the scenes of Madagascar's first amphibian conservation breeding center, in Andasibe. What began as an effort to build insurance colonies of common frog species—mainly to be ready in case the chytrid fungus ever reached Madagascar—became something else entirely when a mining company came knocking, looking for someone to rescue the threatened Golden Mantella before its habitat was cleared.
It turned out the team was (almost) ready for a threat they never saw coming. Where are they now? And what does the future look like for the Golden Mantella?
About our guest:
Dr. Devin Edmonds is Amphibian Ark's Program Director for Africa and South Asia. He worked with Mitsinjo for over six years, where he helped launch the country's first amphibian conservation breeding facility, helped establish monitoring programs for Andasibe's amphibians, and collaborated on action plans for threatened species. Devin has over a decade of experience in amphibian conservation and research.
Nasoavina Christin is the President of Association Mitsinjo, a project manager across several of Mitsinjo's projects, and a seasoned ecotourism guide.
Documents referenced in the episode:
- Bletz, M., Rosa, G., Andreone, F. et al. Widespread presence of the pathogenic fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis in wild amphibian communities in Madagascar. Sci Rep 5, 8633 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/srep08633
Transcript
[00:00:00] Devin Edmonds: We actually weren't sure if we were ready for the golden mantella frog. We were approached by a mining company that basically asked us to take their “salvaged” frogs, in, like, the language of a mining company. They said, "Hey, we're doing some definition drilling in this area, and turns out there's this endangered frog here, and we need to put them somewhere. Can you take them?" And we said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa - wait a second."[00:00:30]
[00:00:33] María Braeuner: Welcome to Amphibian Rescue, the Amphibian Ark Podcast. Amphibian Ark's mission is to rescue amphibians in crisis, especially those that cannot currently be protected in the wild, with the ultimate goal of one day returning them to their safe and restored habitats. I'm your host, María Braeuner, and I invite you to join me as we share these inspiring stories of how ex situ conservation, collaboration, and science are already giving amphibians a second chance and a future back in the wild.
[00:01:12] When you think of Madagascar, there's a big chance you first think of lemurs, chameleons, baobabs, or maybe even vanilla. But did you know there are over 400 described frog species in Madagascar? Scientists think there might even be more than 700, and most of them exist nowhere else on Earth. Among them is the endangered golden mantella, or Mantella aurantiaca.
[00:01:37] Less than three centimeters long, bright yellow, orange, or even red, it was once exported by the tens of thousands to terrariums around the world as part of the pet trade. Today, it survives only in small forest fragments in Eastern Madagascar, threatened mainly by habitat loss and fragmentation. Actually, back in [00:02:00] 2004, it was feared that the golden mantella might have been nearly extinct in the wild. But it wasn't.
[00:02:07] Today, there's an active breeding conservation center working to secure its future. In this episode, together with Dr. Devin Edmonds from Amphibian Ark and Nasoavina Christin from Association Mitsinjo, we explore the ex situ program that, somewhat accidentally, helps rescue this species. Let's meet our guests.
[00:02:26] DE: So I have kept amphibians as a hobby personally since I was a child, and as a teenager I started keeping these mantella frogs, which are endemic to Madagascar, and breeding them and getting really good at keeping and breeding them. And when I was around 19, I decided that I wanted to see them in the wild too.
[00:02:48] And so, um, I was working at a pet store at the time, and I saved up for over a year to get a plane ticket together, and I bought a plane ticket and wrote down all the village names where all these different mantellas occurred that I wanted to see. And I flew to Madagascar and on my second day in the country going to look for the golden mantella frog, I was walking down the road of a village in Andasibe showing people photographs of the golden mantella frog, asking them if they knew where this frog was, if they could take me to go photograph it and see its habitat.
[00:03:25] And one of the people I talked to was the brother of Nasoavina, the president of Mitsinjo, and we started going together, spent a week together looking for frogs. And I had also brought a photo of my, my frog room at home, of all my terrariums. And coincidentally, a few months before I had arrived, some people from Mitsinjo had been at a big amphibian conservation meeting in Antananarivo, in the capital, and had heard about all this ex situ conservation work going on in other places in the world, so in Panama, for example.
And [00:04:00] so when I showed, uh, Edupsie, Nasoavina's brother, and some other people in Mitsinjo these photos of my frog room, they're like, "Oh, yeah, we know about that. We wanna do something like that." And so that's kind of where the idea started and how I ended up getting involved with Mitsinjo at the start
[00:04:15] MB: And when you said that you went with these photos your first time in Madagascar asking people, “Do you know where I can find these?”, were you speaking English, or did you learn Malagasy before that?
[00:04:24] DE: I, I had taken a couple semesters of French. I had started at a community college, so I [00:04:30] had, I had just had, I think, one year there. And so I had some vocabulary, but no, I was very happy that Edupsie, Nasoavina's brother, spoke English and was used to dealing with tourists who did not speak French very well, and I kind of lucked out in that sense.
[00:04:44] Um, but no, I did not speak Malagasy at the time. And I went back as a tourist a couple times after that first trip, and it wasn't until actually 2010 when I stayed on and kind of just started [00:05:00] working with Mitsinjo after we got funding to start the breeding facility, first from Amphibian Ark, and then the Association of Zoos & Aquariums. But I went back a couple other times as a tourist because I just loved spending time in those forests looking for frogs and, um, experiencing it.
[00:05:16] MB: Mitsinjo was founded in 1999 by community members that understood that the forest survival and their own livelihoods were deeply connected. Today, Mitsinjo tackles conservation from many different angles. Let's meet their president.
[00:05:30] Nasoavina Christin: My name is, uh, Nasoavina Christin. I explain my role. I'm president for Mitsinjo. I'm manager for ecotourism, and I'm like a project manager in charge of…because we have many different sectors, we work with different organizations in Mitsinjo. That is like my, uh, situation, and I'm also professional guide. What we do here in, [00:06:00] uh, Andasibe or in Madagascar in general, number one is we-(fadeout)
[00:06:05] MB: So Mitsinjo began in 1999 with a focus on ecotourism, an activity that continues today. But today, Mitsinjo also manages a protected area, leads forest restoration with a strong focus on local livelihoods, runs environmental education programs and ecotourism activities, and conducts scientific research, including that from the Research Centre for Frogs, which is [00:06:30] also Madagascar's first amphibian conservation breeding center.
NC: We make a research scientific. And the most important research we do, uh, is in the research center for frogs in captivity. That started long time ago. We started with Devin around 12, uh, close like, uh, 13 years ago.
MB: This ex situ center was launched in 2010 after Mitsinjo received [00:07:00] Amphibian Ark's very first seed grant. Mitsinjo has now almost 30 years of working in conservation, research, and sustainable development. But how did Devin, who grew up breeding golden mantellas in the United States, end up helping set up Madagascar's first amphibian conservation breeding facility? As Devin tells it, it was a series of coincidences.
[00:07:24] DE: 2006 was the first time I went to Madagascar, so 20 years ago now. And then I went back again, I think, [00:07:30] end of 2008 or 2009. And that was just on my own as, for a few, for a few weeks or a month. Again, I'd saved up between the two to get another ticket. And then in the end of 2009, I think, Amphibian Ark, the first grant, the seed grant from Amphibian Ark was given to Mitsinjo to start this breeding facility. And that same year I helped them find support from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, and that was enough to really get things up and running and kind of start the project. So I went back [00:08:00] again in 2010, um, with the idea I'd stay for, you know, six months to do training. Um, and yeah, and ended up staying 2010 to 2016 for six years, more or less, um, in Andasibe working with Mitsinjo.
[00:08:15] The relationship with Amphibian Ark, I think that probably began because a curator at the Bronx Zoo at the time, Jennifer Pramuk, I think had emailed me because she saw some photographs of [00:08:30] terrariums I had posted online, and she wanted to know where those materials came from, where we got those from. I had been interning as a undergraduate at the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin, that was involved in the Panamanian EVAC frog rescue program at the time. And I was just interning there, but I'd taken the photographs of these enclosures, and the curator at the Bronx Zoo had seen them online and emailed me. And so that kind of relationship started, and when I told her I was going to Madagascar and met Mitsinjo, I think she, she also [00:09:00] really kind of mentored me and helped me think more carefully about how, you know, kind of the ability that we had in terms of writing in English to find support for this project that clearly was needed. And, you know, people in Andasibe wanted it to happen, and kind of what our role could be in kind of fundraising for it. And so it would've been, yeah, kind of, I guess, I think she had really connected me also to Amphibian Ark at the time, kind of through the, through the zoo network that was starting getting, like, kind of plugged into. And I think Amphibian Ark seed grants, the call for the proposals, the first call, I think, was in 2009, and it was just a coincidence that was at the exact time that we were really talking to Mitsinjo, trying to figure out how to get this project started with them.
[00:09:47] MB: If you're interested in the history of how Amphibian Ark came to be, we recommend you check out the first two episodes of this podcast.
[00:09:57] In 2009, with Amphibian Ark's first [00:10:00] seed grant, the idea for Madagascar's first amphibian ex situ program began to take shape. But back then, the program had an entirely different intention than where it's end up today.
[00:10:11] DE: The justification for the project at the start was a little different than where it's ended up today. Um, I think our mindset at the time in 2008, 2009, we were really focused on the threat of emerging infectious diseases, especially chytrid, and what are we gonna do, you know, with the...[00:10:30] at the time, you know, the narrative, the story was: chytrid arrives and it wipes out all these amphibians; chytrid's not in Madagascar…what if chytrid arrives to Madagascar?" So, I mean, that was the motivation. Madagascar supports an exceptional diversity of amphibian species. I think now somewhere around 700 likely endemic amphibian species, you know, now 430 described, but at the time it was, you know, maybe 250, 300 species described.
[00:10:55] But still, that's a lot of frogs to lose with this idea that if a disease [00:11:00] arrived, they'd be wiped out, and the, the real problem was that there's no ability or capacity or infrastructure or expertise where these frogs occur. And so if they needed to be part of an ex situ conservation program, there's just, there's no way to do it. And so the need was to build the capacity to be able to enact an ex situ program. And a strong, you know, a strong sense of, you know, the international zoo community has all the [00:11:30] experience, but you don't wanna be sending frogs from one country to another, especially not from, you know, Madagascar to Europe or North America or something like that. You wanna instead get the expertise and capacity and resources to the place where the frogs are and do it, do it where they are, you know, aside from being just safer in terms of biosecurity, it's, you know, more ethically, makes a lot more sense, and kinda helps instill pride in local natural resources and a lot of, [00:12:00] lots of good reasons to do that.
[00:12:01] So that was the idea at the time. The need was: there's no capacity in Madagascar, there's tons of frogs that could potentially be threatened by chytrid, let's start on this now and get the expertise and resources and infrastructure in place.
[00:12:14] We were kind of trying to establish this breeding facility with the threat of emerging infectious diseases like chytrid in mind. And so we really wanted to be prepared to work with species with varied life histories and different ecological traits and, you know, because keeping every frog is a little [00:12:30] different. So we had been trying to keep a wide variety of common species just to get that skill set in place. And it took, it took a long time too to establish live food cultures. That's obviously more work. More difficult than keeping the frogs is keeping the food.
[00:12:43] MB: So the original reason for building the ex situ program at Mitsinjo was precautionary. Back in 2009, when all of this began, chytrid had not yet been detected in Madagascar, and it wouldn't be until 2015. But even now, scientists have [00:13:00] detected the chytrid fungus in frogs' skin, but they have not yet observed the disease. Think of it like if we tested positive for a virus, but we never develop any symptoms. However, as we've learned in previous episodes, by 2009 the global amphibian conservation community had already learned quite painfully not to wait. So Mitsinjo began this ex situ program as kind of an insurance, like Devin said, in case or for when chytrid arrived in [00:13:30] Madagascar.
[00:13:33] When we wrote this story for the past newsletter, you shared some photos from 2009, 2010, I guess. Like, you built everything from scratch with the team at Mitsinjo, right?
[00:13:44] DE: Right. There was, I mean, there was a big challenge, and, and, you know, even today the big challenge is just, like, infrastructure, things that you might take for granted if you're not based in Madagascar. I mean, running water, real running water took three years to install to the breeding facility. It took that long [00:14:00] to get the permits through, to get the pipes in place, to... We, we tried all sorts of different methods, you know, from wells to... And really, we had to, had to, to tap into a municipal water source, and the paperwork to get that done just takes time. I mean, a nice thing, however, is that you do really get to see where things come from. I mean, I can take you to, like, the granite mountainside that was chipped away to make the bricks to renovate the building, you know, down the road from where, where the breeding facility is. Like, I know where that [00:14:30] material comes from. You know, it wasn't imported from someplace. It was that mountain over there that is turned into granite blocks for building things in the area.
[00:14:40] And so yeah, getting the infrastructure in place takes a long time, and there are also things that you just can't source locally in Madagascar, like nutritional supplements for amphibians, UVB lighting, you know, that's going on. Bringing fluorescent tubes in your checked baggage [00:15:00] to Madagascar, you know. You can't buy it locally, so you have to bring it, bring it along, and those kind of things are also kind of limitations. Um, but for all those, I think in some ways those are actually kind of easy to get over because, you know, if you think about it, I mean, there's plenty of, you know, banks and hotels and other, there's buildings and running water and electricity in many places in Madagascar. Like, those are kind of easy hurdles to get over, whereas the kind of [00:15:30] day-to-day kind of organizational, getting the expertise in place, you know, to get really good at keeping and breeding amphibians takes time and practice, and, um, in some ways that's a little more difficult and takes, just takes longer than just installing running water.
[00:15:46] MB: Can you tell us a little bit about that, the, the team part of it, the people side of the work?
[00:15:51] DE: Yeah. The project definitely never would have worked without the right people involved, and, [00:16:00] um, you know, the same people who started at the start of the project in 2010, um, most of them are still working there today. The breeding facility provides stable income for, I think now, 11 or 12 people in Andasibe, like, you know, well-paid technical work for people who otherwise might not have had it. But at the start, um, you know, I went there and we started…basically for six months before we kept frogs, we [00:16:30] practiced keeping and breeding insects, catching crickets, catching flies, catching cockroaches, catching isopods, and practiced keeping them.
[00:16:39] We had talked to Nasoavina and other members to kind of figure out who should work at this future breeding facility, and of course Mitsinjo at the time had, like, 50 members. I think they have more now, and, like, almost everybody wanted... This is a nice opportunity, so how do you, how do you choose? And so we did training courses basically for several [00:17:00] weeks, and then sort of a frog school, like a, you know, come to the training courses and then take the exam, and whoever gets the most right questions, you know, I think six or seven people involved would then kind of move on and we get to practice keeping these insects together.
[00:17:20] And so it was Justin Claude from the start. Justin Claude who really managed the program after I left and was the lead technician while I was there, and who passed away in February (2026) quite unexpectedly. He was really the leader, and he was already, he had, um…one of the founding members of Mitsinjo at the start, and really was somebody that everybody looked up to. I mean, he was really well-respected and, um, just, just a generally pleasant person to be around too. He was somebody you, you wanted to, if you're gonna be practicing different methods of keeping and breeding crickets, [00:18:00] like, you, you're happy to be doing that alongside him. Yeah, so we did this kind of frog school at the start, and then we ended up practicing keeping all these different types of frog food together and developing protocols for all that before, before the team even started working with amphibians.
[00:18:18] So that was kind of the, I'd say, I guess, August through April, practicing keeping and breeding these live foods while the facility was being kind of constructed too. So there was no real place to keep the frogs [00:18:30] either. Um, so that was another reason, let's practice with, nobody really cares about crickets or cockroaches, let's practice with the things nobody cares about, get these husbandry protocols down for the insects, and then move on to frogs afterwards.
[00:18:44] MB: I hope no entomologist is listening to this. (laughs)
[00:18:52] NC: And then the collaboration with Ambatovy's beginning. That means, before golden frogs, we [00:19:00] did like a research for the common frogs.
[00:19:03] MB: So Mitsinjo began working with several common frog species from Andasibe until in 2012, the mining company Ambatovy approached them and changed their entire plans.
[00:19:13] DE: So the plan was not necessarily to kind of go in, rescue the golden mantella frog, and now we have some captive population that's protected forever from threats. That wasn't the idea. The idea was like, let's get the capacity and expertise and [00:19:30] infrastructure in place to be able to do something if needed. We had sort of started working with common species, working to do live foods, kind of how do you culture local live, um, local arthropods for food for these frogs. And we've done that for actually two years before we started working with Mantella aurantiaca, uh, the golden mantella. And we actually weren't sure if we were ready for the golden mantella frog. We were approached by a mining company that basically asked us to [00:20:00] take their “salvaged” frogs, in the language of a mining company. They said, "Hey, we're doing some definition drilling in this area, and turns out there's this endangered frog here, and we need to put them somewhere. Can you take them?" And we said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Um, you know, this is, this is more complicated than just us taking in and holding these endangered frogs.” And so that's kind of where the golden mantella frog, how it kind of entered the story of, of [00:20:30] Mitsinjo and the breeding facility there was, uh, we were actually contacted. We were, I guess, maybe pushed a little early to take this species on, um, than we had anticipated.
[00:20:39] MB: The mining operations began in habitat that overlapped with the golden mantella's habitat. So it turns out that the preparation done to save a set of species from a potential threat was exactly what was needed back in 2012 to save a specific species from a whole other threat.
[00:20:57] DE: And what turned out was that, in fact, [00:21:00] chytrid was not the threat we actually had to be so prepared for. In this case, it was habitat loss, habitat destruction from a mine. And so it was good that we were prepared because I think if Mitsinjo hadn't been in place there, I'm not sure what the mine would have done. Maybe there are other ways you can mitigate your loss to biodiversity, for example, for paying to protect other habitat elsewhere, and maybe they could have gotten away with it that way. But in that case, the golden mantella might not occur there, and you just lose those populations. So I'm, I'm glad we were kind of ready for mantellas [00:21:30] at the time.
[00:21:32] MB: But I think it's a great story of not only, let's say, in a way corporate responsibility for companies like mining companies, but also the preparation, right? Like Amphibian Ark, as, you know, Jonathan shared this in the third episode, that for a long time it was a very reactive organization, and now we're trying to be more of the opposite, right? Like be ready for when something like this happens.
[00:21:55] DE: You also don't always... I mean, you don't... The future's uncertain. You don't know what threats are gonna emerge or what's [00:22:00] needed, and if you don't have the skill set in place or the, the ability to enact ex situ conservation when it's needed, um, that can really limit the possibilities and the way to address these declines and extinctions.
[00:22:14] MB: So when the mining company came knocking, the team had to be ready. There was no choice. But how much was known about the species back then?
[00:22:25] DE: For the golden mantella, yeah, the golden mantella in particular, I mean, it's, it has a [00:22:30] tiny, tiny distribution. It's highly threatened. But it was, yeah, like we mentioned, so it had been, um, exported really heavily in late '90s. I mean, you have tens of thousands coming out of the wild and being shipped mainly to North America, also to Europe for the pet trade, and every pet store would have them. I mean, it's really astounding to look at the numbers coming out. But that also meant that the husbandry was pretty well understood. They're a relatively easy frog to keep and breed. As a teenager in Wisconsin, I had been able to keep and [00:23:00] breed them in my parents' basement. You know, it was, it, you know, compared to many other amphibian species, they're relatively easy to work with. So in some ways that kind of is an advantage compared to other amphibians where you just really, you don't even know how they breed. So in some sense, that made it a little easier. When these frogs were coming out of the wild for commercial exportation, people didn't know where they were coming from. I mean, the distribution of the species was not even really clear. There was, like, one wetland that, around which there were a couple breeding [00:23:30] ponds known, but there hadn't really even been really good surveys to determine their distribution in the wild. What we know now is there's kind of two, two population clusters. They were almost certainly distributed more widely before then, but most of the forest in the area is now gone. Um, but there's two. There's a north and south cluster, um, and over 100 breeding ponds where they occur. So they, they're in this kind of mid-elevation, sub-humid forest. Most of the year they're up on these forested hillsides and, um, not [00:24:00] particularly active, kind of undercover, and then when the rains arrive, they kind of move down to these ephemeral pools, these breeding ponds in the forest to breed for, you know, a month or two. And that's, of course, when the collectors would move in and just, “oh, there's orange frogs everywhere”, collect them all up, send them to Tana, export them commercially, uh, you know, 25, 30 years ago.
[00:24:19] So finding founders was actually not, not that difficult. In fact, a lot of what we've known about mantella reproduction has come from captivity. In fact, I don't think anybody's ever [00:24:30] found eggs in the wild of golden mantella frogs. I mean, we still don't actually know where they breed in the wild. I mean, we know they all congregate at these ponds, but we don't know where they lay their eggs. So a lot of this has been learned from captivity. What people figured out, um, was that these frogs really breed best when provided with seasonal changes in temperature. So they need this kind of extended cool period and then a warmer wet period, otherwise, they don't really reproduce well [00:25:00] in captivity long term, which kind of matches the seasonal changes that occur just naturally in Andasibe.
[00:25:07] And so one advantage of doing the breeding program within the native range essentially of the species was that those seasonal changes just occur. So there was no... Mitsinjo's breeding facility right now doesn't have any air conditioning units or heating control or anything. It's, you know, tightly screened windows, but the temperature changes seasonally just as it does in the wild.
[00:25:30] So that actually kind of gets past a lot of the difficulties people often have breeding Mantella frogs in captivity, is that we're doing it right in the same climate where they occur, so it's just much easier. And they do, at Mitsinjo's breeding facility, the reproduction really does follow again this, the seasonal cycle and start getting eggs right before the rains arrive, when it's warming up in November, a lot of breeding in December, January, and then it starts slowing down after January just, just like they do in the wild, even though they're in captivity.
[00:25:56] MB: So unlike many conservation breeding programs, [00:26:00] reproduction was not the problem here. But here's a tougher question. If we can successfully breed a threatened species in captivity but its habitat is actively being destroyed, where will those frogs go?
[00:26:13] NC: Some of this habitat is being destroyed by problem of mining exploitation. That is the biggest problem. We should think how is like a situation for Mantella in the future.
[00:26:29] DE: Yeah, [00:26:30] there are Mantella populations I visited when I first went that are no longer there, that I've revisited that are now rice fields, and that's pretty depressing. I think in order for the species to persist, the main thing that needs to happen is better habitat management. So there are a lot of breeding sites that are actually within areas that are either legally protected or are supposed to be managed in a certain way that just are not poorly [00:27:00] managed. And part of that, they're hard to, hard to access, but at the same time, there's lots of people who already live there and are using the land. Uh, most people in Madagascar are subsistence farmers. They're really, you know, getting by on the food they grow, and if there's a good crop, they can, they can sell some of that, but otherwise it's really day-to-day, hand-to-mouth. And you have a large growing human population who's living next to these endangered frogs. And I think in order for the golden [00:27:30] mantella to really have a future, you need improved habitat protection and management, and you also need a way where the people who are living around them are part of that conservation strategy, potentially part of the decision-making process related to how that habitat is managed, and also supported with things that are valuable or meaningful to their own life. Because if you just say there's this, now there's this national park next to [00:28:00] your, the area where you are growing rice, I mean, that doesn't, that's, there's no benefit to you. So there needs to be ways that that's better linked up and managed and implemented.
[00:28:09] MB: Like Nasoavina says, we have to think about the future. The golden mantella can be bred, that much we know, but they need somewhere to return to. And as we learned at the beginning of this episode, Mitsinjo is actively involved in habitat restoration, the management of protected areas, and the community-centered conservation that Devin is [00:28:30] describing, which means that the pieces needed to give the golden mantellas a future back in the wild are being built.
[00:28:37] So as you know, this program began in 2012. Only five years later, in 2017, the first trial releases took place. Golden mantellas were released into artificial ponds created inside the species' natural habitat. Today, Mitsinjo still sustains a breeding population, and more than 2,000 individuals of golden mantellas have [00:29:00] been released. The species status on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has even improved from Critically Endangered in the 2004 and 2008 assessments to Endangered in the 2020 assessment. So there's still work to do, but the signals are hopeful. So I asked Nasoavina and Devin: what does the future of the golden mantella look like to them?
[00:29:22] NC: If we talking about the frogs, uh, I just speak special for my village here in Andasibe. [00:29:30] This is like a capital in the world for frogs. Because during the rainy seasons, if you arrive here, you can find many different species of frogs, and some of them not yet identified [described]. If [there are] no frogs in one place, that means all the environment is beginning to disappear completely. The golden mantella is not extinct, and it not will be [00:30:00] extinct because we're getting more experience from our research center here.
[00:30:05] DE: I think there can be a good future for the golden mantella in the wild. There's been a lot of conservation attention focused on it. In fact, a national conservation strategy was enacted, uh, I believe in 2011 it started for the species, and ran through 2021, and resulted in a new legally protected area around the southern population cluster. So there's habitat that's now protected for the species, [00:30:30] and also resulted in a great reduction in how many are collected and exported for the pet trade, you know, from, you know, 5 to 10,000 a year to, like, 100. Um, so I mean, all that's really positive
[00:30:46] MB: Today, thanks to Association Mitsinjo, this fiery little frog has a chance at a future back in the wild. And there's something worth holding onto about how this story began. Mitsinjo built that breeding center as insurance against [00:31:00] chytrid, a threat that had not yet reached Madagascar. But when a different threat arrived first and the mining activities began clearing the golden mantella habitat, they were already prepared.
And as we heard in episode three, that's the direction in which Amphibian Ark is going toward to. From the reactive approach that was so necessary for so many years, to a more precautionary one, helping local teams in countries where amphibians are most threatened so they can be ready to [00:31:30] rescue and breed threatened species when they cannot be protected in the wild, so when that happens, there's already a safety net in place
[00:31:40] This podcast is brought to you by Amphibian Ark, hosted by me, Maria Bloeuner, with original music by Pablo Bolaños of Biota Specimens and made possible by supporters like yourself who believe amphibians are worth saving. You can help us bring this important message to more people by [00:32:00] subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. Like, rate, review, and share this episode with your friends and family. And if you'd like to be a part of the solution, you can support Amphibian Ark's work directly. Find the link in the show notes. All donations help secure a future for the species that are most at risk. Together, we can continue rescuing amphibians in crisis. Until next [00:32:30] time.
About the podcast
Amphibian Rescue is produced and hosted by María Braeuner, with original music by Pablo Bolaños | Biota Specimens.
Episodes are reviewed and fact-checked by the Amphibian Ark team of experts: Luis Carrillo, Devin Edmonds, Renata Ibelli Vaz, Jonathan Wilcken, Cybele Lisboa, Elizabeth Townsend, María José Chang, and Beatriz Velásquez.
Trailer video footage by © Jaime Culebras; additional clips via © Canva.com by Leo Lee, Black Box, Atelopus | Getty Images, Daniel Bahrmann | Pixabay.
Cover image © Devin Edmonds
Other photos and videos used in Episode 5 © Devin Edmonds.
Audio file for Mantella aurantiaca downloaded from AmphibiaWeb with permission of the author and copyright holder: Vences, M., F. Glaw & R. Marquez (2006, editors): The Calls of the Frogs of Madagascar. 3 Audio CDs and booklet, 44 pp. Barcelona, Alosa.
The podcast is made possible thanks to the continued support of Amphibian Ark donors and partners around the world.
Together, we can continue rescuing amphibians in crisis.
Subscribe via your favorite podcast platform—and to our newsletter—to never miss an episode!
Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | Find your favorite platform