Episode 03: Rescuing Amphibians In Crisis with Dr. Bob Lacy & Jonathan Wilcken
In this episode, Bob (who you met in Episode 2) helps us understand how conservation breeding works as a response to the amphibian extinction crisis, especially when chytrid fungus makes protecting wild populations impossible and insurance populations are needed to prevent species loss. Drawing on Bob’s experience, the episode traces early work on the Puerto Rican toad (Sapo Concho), then goes on to unpack population management and conservation breeding.
Together with Amphibian Ark’s Executive Director, Jonathan Wilcken, we outline the way Amphibian Ark works today and how it is going from a reactive crisis-response organization to a more proactive approach to rescuing amphibians in crisis around the world.
About our guest:
Dr. Bob Lacy is a conservation scientist with the Chicago Zoological Society and served as chair of the IUCN Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG, today CPSG) from 2003-2011. He is still Science Advisor and an active member of CPSG.
After 20+ years working within the ex situ community, including as Director of Auckland Zoo, Executive Director of the Australasian Zoo and Aquarium Association and Chair of Species360, Jonathan Wilcken has been the Executive Director of Amphibian Ark since 2023.
Documents referenced in the episode:
- First Global Amphibian Assessment:
- Initially published in Science: Simon N. Stuart et al. Status and Trends of Amphibian Declines and Extinctions Worldwide. Science 306,1783-1786(2004).
- The seminal book, Threatened Amphibians of the World (Stuart et al. 2008), presents a more in-depth analysis of the GAA1 results.
- First Amphibian Conservation Action Plan: Gascon, C., Collins, J. P., Moore, R. D., Church, D. R., McKay, J. E. and Mendelson, J. R. III (eds). 2007. Amphibian Conservation Action Plan. IUCN/SSC Amphibian Specialist Group. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. 64pp
- Panama Workshop Report: Zippel, K., R. Lacy, and O. Byers (eds.) 2006. CBSG/WAZA Amphibian Ex Situ Conservation Planning Workshop Final Report. IUCN/SSC Conservation Breeding Specialist Group, Apple Valley, MN 55124, USA.
- CPSG's One Plan Approach (OPA)—the OPA was adopted by the global conservation community through an IUCN resolu 2020 World Conservation Congress
Transcript
[00:00:00] Bob L.: About the only way we know how to protect wild populations at this point is to get them out of harm's way, at least temporarily, if they're going to be devastated by chytrid, to set up an insurance population so that we don't lose entire populations and the species forever.
[00:00:19] Maria B.: Welcome to Amphibian Rescue, the Amphibian Ark Podcast. Amphibian Ark's mission is to rescue amphibians in crisis, especially those that cannot currently be [00:00:30] protected in the wild, with the ultimate goal of one day returning them to their safe and restored habitats. I'm your host, Maria 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.
[00:00:58] Maria B.: In the last episode, [00:01:00] we learned why Amphibian Ark exists. But that story raises another question and it's how does this work? How does Amphibian Ark work and what even is conservation breeding? When we hear terms like ex situ conservation, conservation breeding, assurance colonies, insurance populations, this might all seem a little bit abstract, maybe even controversial.
[00:01:23] Maria B.: But this kind of tool or conservation action has been around since before the amphibian crisis [00:01:30] was identified, and it has already saved many species from the brink of extinction. In this episode, we'll learn what exactly is conservation breeding, and how does Amphibian Ark work to rescue amphibians in crisis through ex situ conservation.
[00:01:45] Maria B.: Let's start by learning from Bob's experience.
[00:01:47] Bob L.: I certainly was not an amphibian expert. I had taught vertebrate biology in universities before that, even though I wasn't an amphibian expert, it happens that the first CBSG workshop where I was asked to apply my skills [00:02:00] in risk assessment and population management was a workshop for the Puerto Rican toad or Sapo Concho, and that was back in 1988.
[00:02:08] Bob L.: So, long before it was recognized that chytrid fungus was devastating many amphibian species, that there was an amphibian crisis. So, but even at that time, even back in 1988, it was well known that there were many threats facing amphibians like mammals and birds and everything else, facing many threats. Loss of habitat, fragmentation of habitat, invasive species, et cetera.
[00:02:28] Bob L.: Just wasn't at that [00:02:30] time known that chytrid fungus would raise up its ugly head and devastate so many populations.
[00:02:36] Maria B.: What was the, what were the main threats then for the Sapo Concho, considering that, I think you mentioned 1988 and Chytrid fungus was described 10 years later.
[00:02:44] Bob L.: Right.
[00:02:45] Maria B.: What was the notion back then, or what conservation actions were proposed back then for this?
[00:02:50] Bob L.: Well, for Sapo Concho and for many other amphibians, the primary threats were just loss of habitat. So conversion of their habitats, whether it's wetlands or other [00:03:00] things, into basically habitats for humans, for human development. So draining of wetlands for farmland or, uh, draining of wetlands just to get rid of insects, but also get rid of amphibians.
[00:03:13] Bob L.: Uh, so the Sapo Concho had been reduced down to essentially one or maybe two isolated remnant populations in the western part of Puerto Rico. So it was recognized that those populations would become highly inbred over time [00:03:30] if we didn't do something about building up their numbers quickly. And we also had to make sure that the habitats they still had remained protected and viable for them.
[00:03:39] Bob L.: So it was more an analysis of how large the populations had to be locally to be secure genetically and ecologically and demographically. And if they're not big enough, what we could do about it. One decision was made at that workshop to set up an insurance population or to support an insurance population of animals in captivity so they [00:04:00] could be used to re add back into the wild in places where the wild population was either at low numbers or even already locally extinct.
[00:04:09] Maria B.: So this idea of, of insurance populations for amphibians already existed 20 years before the crisis came, became more known. It
[00:04:16] Bob L.: did. It wasn't, wasn't widely used across very many species. In fact, maybe Sapo Concho would be the first of the amphibian species for what's an insurance population was set up. Uh, but the idea existed even back then, [00:04:30] partly because amphibians, while they had many challenges, also have some benefits.
[00:04:35] Bob L.: One is that they produce a huge number of offspring. So from one pair of Sapo Concho, you can get 5,000 tadpoles, and therefore it's easy to produce enough that you could go release 2000 of them back into the wild, for example, into artificial pools that might be established, and that's what was being done.
[00:04:53] Bob L.: Whereas obviously for something like, you know, a big mammal like a tiger, you're not going to be able to very easily produce large numbers [00:05:00] to put back into the wild to have any meaningful impact on the wild population. You can with many amphibians: get some of the animals secure in captivity before they're gone, and so they could be released back into the wild.
[00:05:12] Bob L.: So it was being done by zoos, but only very scattered, independent efforts. Not any kind of, you know, collective response as what was needed once it was recognized that chytrid fungus was devastating not just a few, but most amphibian species or many amphibian species. [00:05:30] And of course chytrid fungus is almost a unique threat in the sense that it's hard to stop.
[00:05:36] Bob L.: It keeps moving. And about the only way we know how to protect wild populations at this point is to get 'em out of harm's way. At least temporarily if it, if they're going to be devastated by chytrid to set up an insurance population so that we don't lose the entire population and the species forever.
[00:05:53] Maria B.: But even that idea, keeping amphibians in captivity as a safety net, wasn't universally [00:06:00] accepted. Back then, conservationists were used to and more comfortable with protecting species in the wild. So the idea that zoos might need to play a bigger role in conservation raised some eyebrows.
[00:06:12] But,
[00:06:12] Maria B.: As Bob tells us now in the face of this unprecedented crisis, it also became clear why this was absolutely necessary
[00:06:20] Bob L.: in that workshop where they put together that plan,
[00:06:23] Bob L.: there ended up being a whole chapter about the need for assurance populations, ex situ propagation [00:06:30] programs, and that was controversial. There were people who were, you know, co-editors in that document, et cetera, who thought that should just be dropped out. Others decided it had to happen. And yet there are others within the SSC, um, and other conservation organizations who recognized that we were in a crisis, that the typical solutions to conservation problems for species wouldn't be enough.
[00:06:53] Bob L.: Something different had to happen in the case of the amphibian crisis. So it wouldn't be enough just to encourage governments to protect more landscape, [00:07:00] although that had to be done. It wouldn't be enough just to monitor wild populations and move a few animals around now and then that there had to be assurance populations to avert the extinction of what was likely to be hundreds of species.
[00:07:12] Bob L.: So within the conservation community, although there was tension, there's also recognition that uniquely almost for this taxon this broad taxon, amphibians, the help of ex situ community, the zoos and others aquarium and also some research facilities was absolutely [00:07:30] essential.
[00:07:31] Bob L.: So the one way to counter the fear among some of the conservation community that zoos just want to take animals for their exhibits was to say, no, we're going to put their expertise to help those countries where the animals are, breed them and sustain the populations and insurance populations. Um, and therefore not even gonna take any, but we're gonna put the emphasis on the countries where the species exist, especially for something like amphibians that are so decimated by chytrid and [00:08:00] probably other diseases as well,
[00:08:02] Bob L.: moving animals around is a really risky thing to do. And in fact, chytrid was spread around the world by humans. Almost certainly by, you know, the pet trade and research animals that were moved around the world and inadvertently moved chytrid all the way all around the world, which is, you know, a disaster.
[00:08:20] Bob L.: Um, so, you know, currently we wouldn't move animals between continents or between countries without going through rigorous quarantine. But even with rigorous quarantine, there might be [00:08:30] diseases that you miss that you end up accidentally spreading. So to the extent possible, you ought to be breeding the animals and setting enough insurance populations into place, places where they came from, and not have to move them around the world.
[00:08:43] Bob L.: And that involves then training people there, building the facilities there, all of that. So if we were going to start training people and start building facilities and start doing things correctly, why not do it in the right place? Because it wasn't like mammals where we'd say, oh, already we [00:09:00] have the expertise in the United States, or in the UK or in Europe, and therefore let's just rely on that. Amphibians,
[00:09:06] Bob L.: we couldn't rely on that because the expertise wasn't there. We had to build it from the ground up, and therefore there was the opportunity to sort of do it right from the beginning, which is involve the countries where the species live in the wild, and why not train them instead of training additional US biologists.
[00:09:23] Maria B.: That emphasis of in-country programs and in-country training where and when it is necessary is still a [00:09:30] big focus of Amphibian Ark's work today. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we talk about how Amphibian Ark works, I asked Bob if he could help us understand what population management and conservation breeding actually mean.
[00:09:43] Maria B.: And you've mentioned. Several times by now, the terms population management, managing animals, moving animals around in the wild as a strategy or tactic for population management. And then we're talking also about insurance populations. I'm sure people that are listening to us as well might be wondering, what does [00:10:00] this mean and what does this imply?
[00:10:01] Maria B.: 'cause I think for a long time there was also this idea of let's just let nature be nature. But unfortunately we miss those signs and we're too late for that. And we need some level of management these days. Can you explain to us, um, give us a little lecture here, a little primer on what is population management?
[00:10:17] Bob L.: Well, I'll start from the standpoint from zoos and then expand from there. Um, for zoos back in about the 1980s, it was recognized that we couldn't and shouldn't rely on taking animals from the wild [00:10:30] to provide, uh, the educational and opportunities for the public. Therefore, we needed to maintain our populations as breeding populations into generations into the future.
[00:10:42] Bob L.: And that meant that we had to start paying attention to things like pedigrees, who was breeding to who, what their nutritional needs were, whether they were addressing, allowing them to breed appropriately, behavioral and social needs of the animals, a whole lot more than just putting them in an exhibit.
[00:10:57] Bob L.: So the focus became, starting in the [00:11:00] 1980s, actually championed by CBSG, that we had to maintain healthy, large, viable populations in zoos so that you could actually turn the situation around, instead of taking animals from the wild, we would have surplus animals to go back to the wild when and where that might be useful.
[00:11:18] Bob L.: And in general, population management involves for not just zoos, but for other populations, you know, in the wild, the same general concepts of how do you maintain the population so [00:11:30] they're healthy on into the future. And that means attending to their genetics. Things like making sure they're not fragmented into little pockets of habitat where each individual animal has no chance to find a mate, or even if they find a mate,
[00:11:42] Bob L.: it's only a relative. Um, and it is well known that inbreeding causes problems with reduced reproduction and reduced survival in most species. So if you don't pay attention to population management, and that involves deciding who to breed to who, how to move them around, how often to move them, how many to [00:12:00] move, where to move them.
[00:12:01] Bob L.: All those management decisions. You're going to lose the population sort of one by one, winking out as they become isolated, little pockets that can't make it on their own. So for zoos, it was important for zoos to work together because no one zoo is gonna have enough animals to have a healthy breeding population of almost anything.
[00:12:20] Bob L.: In the wild, you're not going to be deciding who to breed to who in very many cases you don't have that level of control, but you do have control over things like how often to literally pick up an [00:12:30] animal, move it in truck to a different place, or how much you need to connect the habitat up so that the animals can move on their own and connect to find, you know, appropriate mates over time.
[00:12:41] Bob L.: So questions like for the Florida panther was one of the species I worked on. Um, working with wildlife agencies, they need to know how many Florida panthers do they need, and therefore how much habitat needs to be protected to assure the population will persist for generations into the future. Not only persist but grow, [00:13:00] they also decide how many different populations do they need in multiple places so that disaster hit like a disease, wiped out one population,
[00:13:08] Bob L.: there'd be other populations still in existence to restock the area that lost the species. So population management's a diverse set of tools that involves genetics, ecology, demography, behavioral considerations, all of that. Um, so there's a whole lot that goes on behind the scenes, both in wildlife agencies and in zoos to make sure that the population still [00:13:30] persists on into the future.
[00:13:31] Bob L.: And so really attending to the multi-generation, uh, management of the populations, I should point out that in terms of terminology, sort of population management becomes what we call conservation breeding. When the breeding programs are designed, not just to maintain them for the purpose of zoos, but to maintain a healthier population as an insurance population or for research purpose serves other purposes that really serve the wild population.
[00:13:58] Bob L.: So the ultimate goal then becomes making [00:14:00] sure they persist in the future, in the wild, in their natural habitats. And there's various ways that the ex situ programs can contribute to that. And obviously lots of other things have to happen as well, you know, habitat protection and reduce poaching and avoiding dumping toxins on their environment, et cetera.
[00:14:18] Bob L.: But one key piece of managing the wild populations can be making use of the tools of ex situ or conservation breeding.
[00:14:27] Maria B.: But besides counting on these captive [00:14:30] populations to reintroduce them to the wild. There's one more thing they can help us with. You see, some species might be too rare to find, maybe too secretive in their behavior or simply disappearing way too fast.
[00:14:42] Maria B.: And captive populations gives us the opportunity to study other aspects of them. Now, this has to be done with caution, but let's hear what Bob has to say about this.
[00:14:52] Bob L.: Probably need to talk to more of ambient experts about this. But for things like chytrid fungus, it's a good example. We're not going to be very successful [00:15:00] at understanding how chytrid fungus infects the, uh, frogs and toads. Um, what treatments might treat, you know, take care of it, whether the populations will adapt to it, all that, without using ex situ populations. You simply don't have the access in the wild or simply like Sapo Concho in Puerto Rico, they're very hard to find. They live mostly underground except for the one day of the year or so that they come out to breed. So you're not gonna be able to do research on the impacts of chytrid fungus on them [00:15:30] or find out how to adapt 'em to it. But you can do that kind of research in captivity and similarly with, you know, behavioral traits and nutritional needs and other needs, temperature requirements, you could go on and on and on.
[00:15:43] Bob L.: But finding out more about what the behavioral, physiological, ecological, um, social needs are of a species is often something you can do in captivity. And then you have to cautiously decide how to apply that to the wild. 'cause captivity is different than the wild. [00:16:00] They have different constraints on them, different opportunities, you know, they're treated when they get diseases, et cetera.
[00:16:05] Bob L.: Um, and you know, the social study and the environment is obviously very different, but still there's a lot we can learn about the animals from research. And, uh, just really research that's necessary for the population management of the captive populations, but also tells us something about what the requirements are for survival in the wild.
[00:16:25] Maria B.: So conservation breeding involves raising animals in zoos, aquariums or [00:16:30] other specialized facilities to create insurance populations that can help us prevent extinctions. These programs have to carefully manage the genetics, the health, the behavioral needs of the species to maintain viable populations, always with the ultimate goal of one day, returning those species back to their safe habitats in the wild.
[00:16:50] Maria B.: So how does Amphibian Ark do that? Let me now introduce you to Jonathan Wilcken, Amphibian Ark's executive director, who will tell us more about where Amphibian Ark is [00:17:00] today, what they do, and where is it going?
[00:17:03] Jonathan W.: Essentially there's three things we do. We, uh, we have processes to identify those species that would most benefit from a conservation breeding response.
[00:17:13] Jonathan W.: So the Amphibian Ark's Conservation Needs Assessment. We work closely with our colleagues at the Amphibian Red List Authority who are involved in assessing extinction risk. We add a layer to that that assesses conservation needs of individual [00:17:30] specimens, uh, individual species.
[00:17:31] Maria B.: We'll talk about Amphibian Ark's Conservation Needs Assessment tool in a future episode,
[00:17:36] Jonathan W.: and from that we can diagnose those species that are most in need of an emergency conservation breeding response.
[00:17:44] Jonathan W.: Secondly, there are really, um, you know, particular sets of expertise and knowledge needed in order to manage successfully amphibian conservation breeding programs. Where it's needed, we can help build that capacity. [00:18:00] Um, we can run, we run training programs in amphibian management, ex situ,in amphibian veterinary, in population management for amphibians and so forth.
[00:18:11] Jonathan W.: And then, and then thirdly, one of the barriers often to getting an amphibian conservation breeding program up and running, it just is in the very beginning where you have to ha fit out and equip a facility. And some of the, in some circumstances, just the costs of getting the program up and running [00:18:30] end up being a significant barrier.
[00:18:32] Jonathan W.: And we, um, can help provide seed funds to get those programs up and running where, where we're working with institutions. So that's essentially
[00:18:41] Jonathan W.: our role.
[00:18:42] Jonathan W.: Perhaps the best way to, um, illustrate all of this is with an example. Um, and, and I'll just turn to the Valcheta frog. It's a, a species limited, um, to a very small area in the upper reaches of Patagonia
[00:18:57] Jonathan W.: in, in Argentina. [00:19:00] We ran a workshop with Argentinian amphibian biologist back in 2010 during which it was identified that there was a series of threats that were really, um, hitting that species hard. So, um, and that, that species had already disappeared from about 30% of the sites that it used to be known at.
[00:19:20] Jonathan W.: It was in already restricted to a very small area, so it was at very high risk
[00:19:26] Jonathan W.: of
[00:19:27] Jonathan W.: Extinction. So within a year of that [00:19:30] workshop, we had delivered the first, um, set of training in Argentina, specifically for, um, amphibian Conservation Management. Within three years of that team in Argentina, were ready to get a facility up and running, and we helped with that by providing
[00:19:49] Jonathan W.: seed funding for the first dedicated for Argentina's first dedicated amphibian breeding facility. A year after that they had commenced, uh, [00:20:00] conservation breeding program for Valcheta's frog. At the same time they'd started habitat restoration work, um, and a couple of years after that so it's seven years after our initial workshop, the, the first trial releases were begun,
[00:20:13] Maria B.: and we'll actually have a whole episode about the Valcheta Frog program with a team from Argentina in a future episode. So subscribe to the podcast and stick around.
[00:20:23] Jonathan W.: Um, so you can see the points of intervention where Amphibian Ark has helped that [00:20:30] process along. The other thing that this beautifully illustrates is for some species and in some circumstances,
[00:20:36] Jonathan W.: the process of recovery can be very quick. Um, and, and so all of this signals that where we can help as Amphibian Ark and the fact that that amphibian recovery for many species is, is achievable and um, and relatively inexpensive and can happen relatively quickly.
[00:20:58] Maria B.: I just find it interesting [00:21:00] when you say that it happens really quick in seven years, and for a lot of people expect like faster results.
[00:21:04] Maria B.: But this is a very important thing. I, I think that people can, um, that, that, that we share this, I mean, if we think, you know, that there's not a... conservation takes time. It needs time.
[00:21:14] Jonathan W.: It does take time. And if you think, you know, the conservation problems that we, uh, that all conservationists are addressing have been decades, sometimes centuries in the making.
[00:21:26] Jonathan W.: So you don't reverse a course, you know, um, [00:21:30] immediately, you don't reverse course in one year. And usually for the vast majority of species, meaningful recovery will take decades and decades. Um, and that's why it's so, um, you know, uplifting to think of what can be achieved with species like, like amphibians in a relatively short
[00:21:50] Jonathan W.: period of time. And it's stories like that, Valcheta frog story that really make me hopeful. The thing is that one of the [00:22:00] factors behind a general sense of conservation despair that that exists a little bit in the world these days is how intractable the problems seem. If you are, you know, if you are losing, um, swathes of tiger habitat, how intractable the recovery of tigers might seem, for instance. Um, however, with amphibians, we largely know what to do to recovery amphibians. Now we don't know that for every single [00:22:30] species and in every single circumstance, but largely we know what to do and largely, it is relatively inexpensive to do it, and largely because amphibians, many amphibians rely on relatively small areas
[00:22:46] Jonathan W.: it's relatively undisruptive to do it. So to me, although we have a, a class of a whole class of species that are threatened wholescale in a way that we've [00:23:00] never seen before, not us, while we humans have been around, um. There is the potential to turn that level of catastrophe around much more so than for many other conservation problems.
[00:23:15] Jonathan W.: So I think, um, oddly, despite the fact that the circumstances for amphibians are getting much worse, and we know that we've seen, you know, a number of extinctions already, um, I feel [00:23:30] quite optimistic, I think. There's a lot that can be done. There's a lot that can be done relatively quickly. We have a lot of good partners all around the world who we work with that can that, that are coming together to build a more comprehensive response to the amphibian extinction crisis.
[00:23:49] Jonathan W.: And it's doable. Right? And it's not often you can say that about conservation issues, you know, the, the, we can reverse the, the [00:24:00] trend for amphibians and we can do so within a timeframe that we can all imagine.
[00:24:06] Maria B.: Where is AArk going then in the next couple of years? Where do you see the organization's priorities?
[00:24:14] Jonathan W.: When we were first set up, it was in response to, um, a real visceral sense of crisis. And in response to a really kind of clearly identified villain as it were, and a process that was, that [00:24:30] was marching through amphibian populations. And so in a way, we had to be a reactive organization. We were classically crisis response organization where there was a crisis, we would go in and try to help.
[00:24:45] Jonathan W.: And so it made, it made us, um, reactive. And that's been really good. We've honed a whole lot of programs and approaches based on our experience of going in and helping where we've seen the need. So [00:25:00] essentially we, we were focused on where and, and necessarily, so we were focused on where the most immediate crises were, and that was primarily in Latin America.
[00:25:12] Jonathan W.: And so we've developed a whole process and a whole program around conservation, breeding as a response in various Latin American countries. We've aimed to build momentum in particular countries. We have national coordinators now in Brazil, in Guatemala, in in Colombia. But [00:25:30] there are many threatened amphibians in the Afro Tropics in in South Asia, in Southeast Asia.
[00:25:36] Jonathan W.: And we need to export that approach that we have taken really successfully in Latin America and developed programs similar to these in Africa, south Asia and and Southeast Asia. We are now in a position, I think, to be a bit more proactive in the way that we try to roll out our Amphibian Ark assistance [00:26:00] programs.
[00:26:00] Jonathan W.: Largely, we know what to do to reverse the declines of amphibians. What we really need is dedicated people, dedicated institutions, and and more resources. And with that, we can turn the tide for amphibians
[00:26:21] Maria B.: today. We understand the threats much better than we did 20 years ago. We know which conservation tools work. And we've seen species [00:26:30] recover when these tools have been applied. In other words, the challenge is still big, but the path is way clearer than ever before. So we know what to do and we know how to do it, but we need to ramp up these efforts.
[00:26:43] Maria B.: And for that, we need people like you to support Amphibian Ark. Find the link in the show notes. In the next episodes, we'll start getting to know the teams that are working to take care of these frogs and salamanders in their temporary homes, and getting them ready to go back to the wild. Remember to subscribe [00:27:00] wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss when the next episode is out.
[00:27:03] Maria B.: This podcast is brought to you by Amphibian Ark, hosted by me Maria 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, 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 a 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 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 © Jaime Culebras
The podcast is made possible thanks to the continued support of Amphibian Ark donors and partners around the world.
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