Episode 06: Rescuing the Panamanian Golden Frog with Edgardo Griffith
In Episode 6 of Amphibian Rescue, we travel to El Valle de Antón, in central Panama, to hear the rescue story of the Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki)—a species so beloved it appears on countless souvenirs and has had its own National Day since 2010. Yet its popularity did not prevent the species from disappearing from El Valle. But there's hope for the golden frog.
Edgardo Griffith, founder and president of the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center (EVACC), takes us back to how it all began. In the early 2000s, golden frogs were being collected from the streams in El Valle and sold at the Sunday market for as little as 25 cents. Then the chytrid fungus arrived in Panama, and there was no local ex situ facility ready. Edgardo mobilized to get these frogs checked into a hotel: two rented rooms that became a quarantine room and a clean room, and stayed that way for over 14 months while the facilities were being built in a local zoo.
Twenty years later, EVACC cares for more than 30 local amphibian species and has now built its first outdoor enclosures to start preparing some of those frogs for the day they can go back into the wild. What has to happen before that day comes? And what does it take to fulfill Edgardo's promise to the frogs?
About our guest:
Edgardo Griffith is the president and founder of the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center (EVACC) in El Valle de Antón, Panama. He has worked in both in situ and ex situ amphibian conservation for more than 20 years, including with Project Golden Frog and helping establish Panama's first amphibian rescue facility, which led to the foundation of EVACC, and he has led it ever since. Today, EVACC operates as an independent Panamanian NGO that you can visit in El Valle de Antón!
Find out more about EVACC on their website.
Follow EVACC on Instagram here.
Documents referenced in the episode:
- Gagliardo, R.; P. Crump; E. Griffith; J. Mendelson; H. Ross; & K. Zippel. 2008. The principles of rapid response for amphibian conservation, using the programmes in Panama as an example. Int. Zoo. Yb (2008) 42:125-135.
- Panama 1967 Decree No. 23 for the conservation of wildlife: https://docs.panama.justia.com/federales/decretos/23-de-1967-mar-10-1967.pdf
- EVACC move in 2019: https://www.evaccfoundation.org/index.php/en/2019/12/26/our-new-location/
Transcript
[00:00:00] Edgardo Griffith: So ex situ for me wasn't…Like, I had to go beyond that. I had to pass that feeling of “I'm putting these animals in captivity”. I had to give something back to them. And what I gave them, in a way, and people might think that I'm crazy, I don't care, I, I gave them a promise: "I put you in captivity [00:00:19] You survive, and I'll make sure to bring you back."
[00:00:26] María Braeuner: Welcome to Amphibian Rescue, the Amphibian Ark [00:00:30] 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[00:01:00]
[00:01:07] MB: Over 200,000 years ago, a massive volcanic explosion formed what we today call El Valle de Antón in central Panama, a wide green valley that for a long time was also the home of the Panamanian golden frog. This small, bright yellow frog lives near fast-flowing streams. And because the water is too loud, they [00:01:30] cannot really hear other frogs calling.
[00:01:32] So these frogs have learned another way to communicate between themselves, and they basically wave to each other. This is called semaphoring, and you'll hear that word later on. If you're Panamanian or if you've ever been to Panama, you probably have seen this frog in many places, from souvenirs to lottery tickets, and since 2010, there's also National Golden Frog Day on August 14th.
[00:01:58] But this frog has been an important symbol [00:02:00] for Panamanians long before that. But despite its cultural significance, its scientific intrigue, and the fact that this species counts with legal protection since the 1960s, none of this has prevented it from disappearing from this valley. But they're not exactly gone.
[00:02:18] Today, I talk with Edgardo Griffith, founder and president of El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center, or EVAC, Panama's first amphibian rescue center. For over 20 years, Edgardo [00:02:30] has run the EVAC facilities, and today they host and care for over 30 amphibian species. If you've been with us since the first episodes, you might recall that the arrival of the chytrid fungus around the mid-2000s was also the time when the world started paying attention to this disease.
[00:02:47] Edgardo was there when it arrived. Today, we dig deeper into this part of the story: the frogs that led to Panama's first amphibian rescue center, frogs that even had to be checked into a hotel, [00:03:00] and who are now getting ready to get back into the wild. Now let's meet Edgardo and learn how his work with amphibian conservation began.
[00:03:09] EG: Well, my interest became more evident when I had the opportunity for the first time to go into a cloud forest and see where amphibians live and the way how this, all this dynamic works, uh, because I was a [00:03:30] microbiology student. You know, I've always been interested in biology since I was a kid, but I was in the wrong field, so to speak, 'cause I thought I was more interested in microbiology and parasitology. [00:03:44] But then in 2000, well, the end of 1999, that's when I went to the field and I realized that I loved amphibians and reptiles.
[00:03:56] MB: There's something about the cloud forest of Central America [00:04:00] that changes us all, myself included. But perhaps you remember Joe Mendelson from episodes one and two. Joe shared with us how his work and that of many other scientists around Central America in the early 2000s helped describe and raise awareness about the amphibian crisis. [00:04:18] It was around that time, too, that Joe and Edgardo met, and in many ways, Edgardo was one of the first responders to the amphibian crisis in Panama.
[00:04:27] EG: Indirectly, yes. From 2000 through 2004, I worked for a project called Golden Frog Project, which main focus was to work on the conservation of golden frogs under a kind of a special conservation approach, which, in a few words, involved collecting our golden frogs and sending them to zoos and aquariums, like zoological institutions in United States.
[00:05:01] You know, this is the year 2000…Which in a way guaranteed that the species didn't go extinct, but at the same time it was, you know, at the end of the day, the feeling wasn't that great 'cause I personally collected 99% of the animals, the founders that were sent to United States.
[00:05:26] But there was this little kind of weird taste behind it 'cause, you know, like we're collecting a natural resource and sending it somewhere else for someone to take care of. Uh, that wasn't entirely satisfying, sort of speak. So in 2004, when I finished with the Golden Frog project, I did all the field work and collected all the data to describe the phenology of the species, where it lives, [00:06:00] who it lived with, who eats it, what it eats, you know, where does it sleep, for Atelopus etecki and Atelopus varius specifically.
[00:06:08] Um, and then in 2005, I met Joe Mendelson and Ron Gagliardo, Joe from the Zoo Atlanta and Ron from the Atlanta Botanical Garden. And at this point, we were already talking about the mass extinction since we had already [00:06:30] witnessed the decline of El Copé National Park, which was a highly diverse amphibian diverse, uh, ecosystem that, uh, the chytrid fungus arrived in 2004 and ended up killing 90-some percent of the species and reducing the amphibian diversity to near, you know, 1% of what it used to be.
[00:06:56] So Ron and Joe had a [00:07:00] pilot proposal, and it was basically to see if we could collect…find animals, collect them, keep them in captivity in a kind of a temporary facility, and then ship them to United States. So again, again, that same pattern of “we collect things here, we keep them for a while, and then we send it”.
[00:07:26] Because at the time there wasn't- [00:07:30] I guess the excuse was that we didn't have the expertise, facilities, infrastructure, the local capacity to, to take care of our animals. And because that pilot program went so well in a way, we convinced some people, key people at the Houston Zoo, that it was worth to build a facility in Panama.
[00:07:56] So it was more, like, evident that we needed [00:08:00] a more local approach. And, you know, we, we were just passionate about it, and I guess that was enough to convince Bill Konstant; he was the director of conservation and science at the Houston Zoo. The Houston Zoo allocated about $10,000 to start with the project, and that's how we started.
[00:08:23] Um, I wasn't, I wasn't directly involved with the project, so I did all the arrangements as I was getting ready to [00:08:30] go to grad school and all that. So I was, in a way, just like an advisor to the project. Uh, and that's how it started.
[00:08:40] MB: $10,000. That's what it cost back then to start what would be the first Panamanian amphibian rescue center. [00:08:47] But before that, the project Golden Frog that Edgardo mentioned was actually started in 1998 and founded by Kevin Zippel, who eight years later would become Amphibian Ark's first executive [00:09:00] director. But if you've been with us since the beginning of this podcast, you already know that story. So let's stay in Panama.
[00:09:06] Long before Amphibian Ark existed, many pieces were already moving to rescue Panamanian amphibian species. Let's begin by learning more about the famous Panamanian golden frog, a species that is basically a national symbol.
[00:09:22] EG: You know, the golden frog has always been a symbol of good fortune, good luck, um, like a [00:09:30] charming thing for Panamanians, especially the, the local indigenous community, and with good reason. [00:09:40] Amphibians have always been kind of associated with wisdom, with fertility, with, you know, prosperity in a way, with the rain, with abundance. So the golden frog was already something within the culture. But what [00:10:00] happened is, you know, because it's one of those animals that is naturally beautiful, you don't need to convince people that that is, is important, right? [00:10:08] 'Cause it's beautiful. That's humans, that's how our brains work. It's, it's beautiful, it's pretty, then it needs to be taken care of somehow if it's in trouble. And, and as a matter of fact, the golden frog has been protected since the '60s. It's, i- incredibly and, and crazy how it became listed [00:10:30] in the United States Endangered Species list back in the '60s.
[00:10:36] MB: The Panamanian government published an executive decree for the conservation of wildlife in 1967. This included a specific list of species in immediate danger, which needed urgent protection measures. Among them was the golden frog. Around the same time, the United States also included the Panamanian golden frog within their Endangered Species Act.
[00:10:58] Now, if like me, you're [00:11:00] also a little bit surprised to hear that, there's a very good reason behind it. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service website, the reasons to include foreign species in the United States Endangered Species Act allows to regulate certain activities involved in the wildlife pet trade, like the import, export, and commercial activity of endangered species, at least within the United States.
[00:11:25] EG: But the thing is that it was already protected, but locally [00:11:30] within the crater, El Valle is a, is a volcanic crater, okay? Uh, it's about eight to nine kilometers across. But because the golden frog was so important and so beautiful- People were collecting them and putting them in hotels, in restaurants, in, you know, like glass tanks or acrylic tanks for tourists to see.
[00:11:57] Um, but they were not being [00:12:00] taken care of properly. Like, their food, their husbandry wasn't there. They would just put, like, fruit, ripe fruits to attract fruit flies, and that's what the frogs were supposed to eat, but the... Oftentimes, the, the tanks were covered with mosquito net, and how mosquitoes are gonna go in there if you have a mosquito net to, you know, to keep the frogs in.
[00:12:23] But anyways, that caused the local extirpation of the species by 1960, [00:12:30] um, that was the, the last official record that golden frogs were collected or found inside the crater. However, by the year 2000 that I started working with the golden frogs…if you drove in any direction 10, 20 minutes from El Valle outside the crater, you could find golden frogs then.
[00:12:53] So it's always been important. Kevin Zippel, Kevin Zippel was my boss with [00:13:00] the Golden Frog Project. That's how we met, okay, uh, in 2000. Um, and one of our first goals was to reduce the illegal poaching of the species, uh, 'cause on Sundays, we have a Sunday market. Any person could come to El Valle and buy golden frogs for a dollar or 25 cents.
[00:13:22] So one of our first goals was to eliminate that trade, and [00:13:30] we did that by approaching the people, which wasn't easy, but th- these illegal collectors, which were oftentimes campesinos, you know, like people from the rural communities from outside El Valle and sometimes from inside the crater, and told them like, "Hey, if you take us where you collected those frogs, we will pay you."
[00:13:53] Um, and we convinced a couple of them, and that's how it happened. That's how we were able to find [00:14:00] populations of golden frogs around the crater, not inside, but around. And then we established a monitoring program, that was every other week. So I would go to the places, and we set up 100-meter transects, and I counted adults, juveniles, tadpoles, eggs, everything.
[00:14:22] MB: When, when you talk about these people that were selling them, it also sounds like it could have been risky or dangerous, right? Did [00:14:30] you ever get in trouble with, with them, that you were meddling with their market?
[00:14:34] EG: It was, it was challenging, challenging, uh, at the time. One thing that did happen was that in 2005, [00:14:46] right after the project with Joe Mendelson, some popular newspaper magazines and, you know, articles were saying that we were selling golden frogs. I had a, a group of local [00:15:00] people that went to Hotel Campestre with bats and shovels and machetes, and they declared that they didn't want me and my, my girlfriend at the time, Heidi, my wife now, to be here anymore because we were selling their frogs. And that was, you know, frightening, right?
[00:15:29] MB: Mm-hmm. I can imagine.
[00:15:30] EG: but…these people, you know, you couldn't be reasonable with them. They were upset. So then I just, I just say, "Hey, look, I'm Panamanian just the same, the same as you all are, and I have as much right to be here as you do. So if you don't feel that I should be here, you have to be, you have to force me out."
[00:15:54] It was... 'cause, you know, I didn't have any other option, right? But at some [00:16:00] point, I did tell them, like, "Give us the opportunity to show you that that's not what we're doing. We're not selling our frogs." And now those same people, those, the grandkids of those people or the, the kids of those people that showed up at my front porch wanting to run me out of town, they're the same people that dress their grandkids and, and kids as golden frogs for Golden Frog Festival. (laughs) So.
[00:16:29] MB: That's such a, such a wonderful story. Do you know if anyone that was selling frogs 20 years ago stopped doing it, uh, from all of the things that they've, they were seeing that you were doing?
[00:16:41] EG: Yes. Uh, two of the main people that were selling, collecting and selling them, we, uh, hired them to basically go with me to the transects every other week. [00:16:53] Um, so yeah, they stopped. They definitely stopped that, and... 'cause, you know, once, once they [00:17:00] realized that they could get $20 for a couple hours just to go with somebody or a couple people to the stream every, every other week for a couple of days, was more profitable than going to the field, collect these frogs and put them in a jar, and then go to El Valle and hope that you sell them, you know.
[00:17:22] MB: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:22] EG: Um, so it was, it was in a way positive. Plus, you know, the whole we back up [00:17:30] our approach with numbers, with reality, like, if you keep doing this, at some point you're gonna run out of animals 'cause the animals are not, you know, it's not sustainable to just keep extracting them and, and interrupting their life cycles and, you know, when you have all the habitat loss, pollution, deforestation, uh, all these other synergy of threats. [00:17:58] So yeah, they stopped.
[00:17:59] MB: And now that you mentioned this, that, you know, at some point they would run out of frogs, this was also going to happen somehow without the work that you've been doing because of other causes, like you were saying, right? So let's go back a little bit to this, to the ex situ part. You've told us already that you were doing a lot of fieldwork.
[00:18:16] So you had this field experience, and then you had now the opportunity that the Houston Zoo wanted to fund ex situ initiatives in Panama. And you mentioned before that the husbandry part was maybe not, not so [00:18:30] strong there yet. How did this happen to start the EVAC facilities?
[00:18:35] EG: Well, it was mostly ingenuity and passion. [00:18:41] You know, once we had those animals collected, we had to figure out how to feed them. We didn't have food colonies, so…And, you know, at the time we were 8, 10 people, uh, collecting, doing the husbandry and all of that in a ho- in two hotel rooms, because when the [00:19:00] chytrid arrived in 2005, the facility was not ready.
[00:19:04] MB: With the support of the Houston Zoo, building the facilities at El Nispero Zoo in Panama began. But building facilities of this type takes time, and if one thing was certain, was that the chytrid fungus was already in the country. It was only a matter of time that it would reach El Valle de Antón. So something had to be done, and fast, even if the facilities were not ready.
[00:19:28] So what do you do? [00:19:30] They collected the frogs anyway and checked them into a hotel. Hotel Campestre, a key player in this story, not only back then, but also where the EVAC facilities are today after they moved in 2019.
[00:19:45] EG: The facility was not ready, so I talked to the owner of the Hotel Campestre. First I talked to the manager, which t- you know, he, he's, he already passed, but I had a… [00:19:56] We were friends, 'cause I used to come every other week to El Valle and I [00:20:00] stayed at that hotel. We had a deal with the hotel where I would stay at the hotel and I go from there. It was like my headquarter when I came to El Valle. So the manager of the hotel was, was a friend more than just a stakeholder or a counterpart.
[00:20:16] Uh, so I convinced the manager to talk to the owner of a hotel to rent us two rooms to put frogs, because that was the only option we had. Um, and those two rooms, we split them into [00:20:30] the quarantine room and the clean room. So the quarantine room was the room where we applied, where animals that came from the field first arrived, where we did all the, you know, we collected the mass, body mass, and SVL, that is snout-vent length, the sex, took photos, assign a collection number, and applied the treatment with itraconazole for 10 days. 10 minutes a day, 10 days And then [00:21:00] after they did, if they survived their treatment and quarantine, which by the way, the treatment was very invasive. You know, 'cause these are wild animals. These are not, you know, pets. And yes, they're little and all that, but they behave just like any other wild animal. They don't wanna be in a antifungal bath for 10 minutes. Uh, so the, the, the animals that survived then were passed into the clean room, and then we would continue with regular husbandry: cleaning them every day, feeding them, [00:21:30] observing them, removing fecals, changing paper towels, things like that. So, uh, we did that, and the promise was that it was just gonna be for a few months while we finished the construction, and we ended up being there for over 14 months.
[00:21:46] So obviously every time the owner of a hotel got there, he would get really mad and yell at me. And, and I have a very special relation. I love this guy like [00:22:00] a father, and he loved me, but he's, he's a businessman. He's not, he isn't one of those persons that he's not gonna give you anything for free, you know? You have to fight for what you want with him. But he, I mean, he's, he's, he's such a beautiful person. His name is Lorenzo Incaprie, and I love this man. He's, he's been a very important key in amphibian conservation in Panama. But anyways, um, I did that deal with the hotel, and obviously that wasn't a [00:22:30] conventional conservation approach, so we had, like, the Washington Post and people coming and, and doing documentaries and, and asking questions and publishing articles about the frog hotel in Panama. And because I, you know, I love frogs and so I was never afraid to talk and share with people how fascinating these animals are.
[00:22:56] And that's what we did. But I remember we were doing a... I was [00:23:00] working with the BBC on a documentary that is called Life in Cold Blood with David Attenborough, and I remember clearly him being sitting in a, in the stream with a golden frog, and he says that “this is probably the last golden frog we're gonna see in nature” and all that and it was actually, like, a fact. 'Cause that day, after, uh, they- we did all the [00:23:30] recordings of a semaphoring frogs and the frog calling and all that, I just went in a little bit while there were still people, like BBC people in the stream. Uh, so I went upstream and I- that's when I started finding dead and dying frogs.
[00:23:44] And, and that was the beginning of a very sad episode of amphibian conservation for me…because I had been monitoring these populations for years. Uh, I [00:24:00] did, I collected the data for my thesis, for my undergrad thesis in that very same stream. You know, I have mostly a, like a personal relationship with these animals, 'cause, you know, males are very territorial, so they defend their territory.
[00:24:17] So the males are always, you always find the males in the same spot, you know? So if you go there, you know, constantly, you get to know the resident males. I mean, there were [00:24:30] always new males coming in and out, uh, same as the females, but you always had your resident male that you... I knew where they were because I've been seeing them in the same spot for years now.
[00:24:43] So it was very sad to find their bodies and collect them 'cause they, you know, it's... I mean, for, if, if you're not, [00:25:00] I guess…I mean, I never considered these animals pets, all right? But I did have a special relationship with amphibians in general. And then when you are a field biologist and you work, you know, to this level with these animals, it's impossible not to, not to have this personal relationship with your subjects.
[00:25:27] Especially when they're [00:25:30] so charismatic and beautiful and, and, you know, 'cause people... Uh, you know, conservation and research is like doors, you know. The more you spend time with these animals, even plants, bacterias, all that, crystals, everything. The more you spend time working with them, the more doors you're opening into their world and the more emotionally involved you become. Especially when the rest of the [00:26:00] planet, you know, most of the people don't understand that these animals communicate, that these animals inhabit a space and they depend on the ecosystem and the ecosystem is, is part of them and, and they're part of the ecosystem.
[00:26:16] I mean, there's, there's all these relationships, right? So it was, it was very difficult, but conservation had to happen independently of the [00:26:30] personal involvement with the animals. So basically the husbandry became More available for us as we went, 'cause some of these animals were never, never been kept in captivity before.
[00:26:52] Gastroteca cornuta, which are fully marsupial frogs. Hemiphractus, uh, at the time was Hemiphractus fasciatus then we split them into two, three different species. You know, Anothecа or Triprion espinosus. You know, the only reference we had how to keep in captivity was the Panamanian golden frog. But for the rest of them, we didn't have a clue.
[00:27:17] MB: Now that I know a little bit more about your field experience, how was your personal feeling back then about the ex situ conservation? 'Cause it's still a controversial topic, right? Working with zoos and doing things ex situ, in this case it's, it seems to be, like, the only thing that could have worked, but it's still controversial. How was your experience with this?
[00:27:37] EG: Once you have seen a decline, and you understand the consequences, you know, once you, you've been in a place that is highly diverse, then you see that, you know, animals dying in large numbers, even sometimes even species that has not been [00:28:00] described yet, you find them dead or dying in the forest, in the streams.
[00:28:05] Um, and you realize that there is no hope for these animals. Then you start fancying the idea of ex situ. Then you start, you know, you... It's, it's like a switch in your head, and when you realize that the only option for these animals to survive is to put them in captivity, obviously there is [00:28:30] a conflict because when you dedicate this much time, when you do things, when you have so much passion for something, for animals, for a species, for plants, the last thing you want to do is to put them in a captive program, okay?
[00:28:47] So yes, there was a big conflict about it. Because of your experience in the field with these animals, your level of understanding is somewhat broader than [00:29:00] for an academic or a person that is pro-animals or that is against captivity, right? You know, when you have all your cards on the table and you know that you only have one of two options if you wanna stay, you know, in the game, so to speak.
[00:29:24] So ex situ for me wasn't... Like, I had to go beyond that. I had to pass that feeling of I'm putting these animals in captivity. I had to give something back to them, and what I gave them, in a way, and people might think that I'm crazy, I, I don't care, I, I gave them a promise. “I put you in captivity. You survive, and I'll make sure to bring you back.”
[00:29:47] MB: So the question was not really between captivity or the wild…but between ex situ conservation or extinction. What happens next? What has to happen for these [00:30:00] frogs to go back into the wild?
[00:30:02] EG: One thing that we have to understand is that a lot of people that do conservation, disregarding or without considering our passion, our fire, our energy, I think one of the reasons why we keep doing it is because we keep that hope for a better world, for, for a moment, for a day that we can say "I wanna bring them back."
[00:30:36] So I normally say this: conservation is not a race, and if you put it as a race, it's not as, you know, who gets there faster kind of race. It's a race where the only goal is to get there because you're not running by yourself. For me, a golden frog alive is more valuable than a dead golden [00:31:00] frog that I try to reintroduce at the wrong time in the wrong place with the wrong people for the wrong purpose.
[00:31:07] To do the release, there's a bunch of different things that need to happen beforehand, because we have to consider that these animals have been kept in captivity since 2005, right? 2005/2006. So we have to get them more used to what nature is. So in our case, the first thing that we did this year is that we built a facility outside where this facility gets sunlight, rain, humidity, temperature, everything as if it was, you know, if they were in nature.
[00:31:43] But this facility is right outside our amphibian containers, okay? So we enclose one space that is between two containers, and we filled it with shelves and tanks, [00:32:00] but not just glass tanks, these special reptariums, which are, like, kind of mesh, and we did, like, small... Like, the same way how we would carry on with a mesocosm, a project in the field, but we're doing it right there in our facility because we want our frogs to get used to their natural conditions, right?
[00:32:19] And we're also working with the Golden Frog Project to import golden frogs from United States [00:32:30] Finally! You know, 20-some years later, we'll bring some golden frogs back to their country, which is very exciting. And, and the idea is to mix that genetic material from United States with our local collection.
[00:32:46] And then once they get more kind of used to natural conditions, then we do the same thing, but in the field, okay? So natural habitat for them, protected areas, [00:33:00] uh, unfortunately, this has to be done considering what a protected area means in Panama, okay? Um, and, you know, again, putting frogs, putting things out there that are not necessarily, uh, protected within a protected area, it's, it could…We have to work with the community. We have to create this level of ownership and consciousness into the general public, okay, before we let them go, 'cause, you know, people might collect them. And we have to, in my opinion, has to be in a private reserve, something that has limited access, at least within the first year or two, that we can collect the data that will tell us how these animals are adapting to their “old-new home”.
[00:34:05] MB: 20 years ago, Edgardo made a promise to the frogs that he was rescuing from a deadly disease in the wild. And as we learn over and over again in this podcast, conservation takes time. Today, EVAC cares for over 30 different amphibian species, and they have now built outdoor enclosures, so step by step, the Panamanian golden frog is getting ready to get back into the wild in El Valle de Antón.
[00:34:33] EVAC and Amphibian Ark were founded around the same time. In fact, EVAC was one of the many things that inspired the creation of Amphibian Ark back in 2006, with the goal of replicating programs like this for more amphibian species around the world through international collaborations, local expertise, and support from people like you.
[00:34:58] MB: This podcast is brought to you by Amphibian Ark, hosted by me, María Braeuner, 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 subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.
[00:35:19] 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.
[00:35:40] Until next 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.
Cover image of this episode: © N. Nehring | Getty Images
Intro and outro video footage by © Jaime Culebras
Other photos and videos used in Episode 6 © EVACC Foundation, Devin Edmonds, N. Nehring | Getty Images, Mabelin Santos | Getty Images, Diario La Prensa Panama
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.
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