Can We Save These Rare Toads From Extinction? | National Geographic

[Music] The WNG toad is found only in the Laramy Plains of Wyoming. It's found nowhere else in the world, and it has the maybe unfortunate distinction of being one of the most endangered amphibians in North America. I think it's the most endangered amphibian in the United States. In 2010, there was one toad that we found in the wild twice that year, so we're pretty sure there was one wild toad. Then last year, I believe they found 200 in one survey, of which they do three over the summer.

So, he's zero in, and there he is right now. There is a lot of effort that we're putting into keeping this toad on the landscape, um, because it declined so far, so fast, right before our eyes. After the population decline in the 1970s, we got down to only about 10 wild individuals, which is when we took them into captive breeding.

The recovery plan for the Wyoming toad has been in effect since the mid-80s. We've got captive breeding, um, and we attempt to maintain genetic diversity. We've been doing a lot of scientific research out here to try and determine what habitat they need, trying to improve the diet of the captive breeding [Music] individuals, because it declined before we really knew much about it. What it needed, trying to understand what was needed for recovery is limiting.

The biggest thing that's hitting the toad right now that we're really trying to understand is a fungal disease called chytridiomycosis, um, which is actually devastating amphibian populations around the world. You have to adapt, you have to be flexible, you have to learn to change your strategies. So, that's a big part of our monitoring and recovery plan right now is trying to understand, um, if there are ways to battle chytrid, um, which unfortunately is a brand new branch of science. We're learning so much.

Reintroductions are often misunderstood as far as a conservation technique. Many people think it's very easy to reintroduce an animal; that you simply take a captive-bred animal, put it back out into the wild, and then it will thrive and flourish and reproduce. Oftentimes, it's much more difficult than that. It's extremely complicated.

One of our main objectives, of course, is to prepare them for being in the wild. Our 900 toadlets, for one feeding per day, would go through 27,000 crickets per week, and we feed them usually twice a day, most every day. Giving them as much possible diversity of food is good for several reasons because, for one, it develops a bigger search image. So basically, anything that moves they'll try to eat versus if only if it looks like a cricket, they'll try to eat it.

For the soft releases, we keep them in a 1 and 1/2 by 1 and 1/2 M outdoor enclosure. We try to make it as nice as possible. We want the transition into the wild as easy and stress-free as possible. It's filled up with some microhabitat sites, a water bowl, and there's a nice gradient of dry to wet. They get, uh, lots of dirt they can burrow in, thick foliage to hide in, and this is very different from the captive environment in which they were raised.

People don't understand, "Okay, you know, the world is changing, and the toad didn't cut it. And, you know, why are we working so hard to save it and spending so much money?" Part of the problem is that humans are changing the landscape, and I think that we have a responsibility to try and protect those that we harm through our activities. But also, you know, back to just biodiversity is important; it keeps us healthy, so we should have an invested interest in the animals around us.

We have eliminated the immediate risk of extinction, and now we have a vibrant captive population. Now we're trying to turn that captive population into a vibrant wild population.