Stunning Close-ups: Meet These Frogs Before They Go Extinct | National Geographic

I think it's unfortunate that the first major wildlife disease outbreak in the world is affecting frogs because a lot of people don't perceive frogs as charismatic and cute and important. But frogs have amazing personalities themselves. They are just as important in the environment as these large animals as well, and they're beautiful.

Kuka National Park is a montane cloud forest in Northwestern Honduras. There is an amazing wealth of biodiversity, especially for the reptiles and amphibians. It was recently assessed as in the top 25 sites in the world for its unique and imperial amphibian diversity.

So, amphibian chytrid fungus is an aquatic fungal pathogen. It's one of the first wildlife diseases that has truly gone global. By the time we knew it existed, it's leading to one of the largest mass extinctions that we have ever documented.

I've been working alongside Jonathan Kby since 2010 here in Kuka National Park. Through the research that we've been doing, we came to understand that chytrid was greatly affecting a lot of the populations of frogs here, and specifically some of the endemic species. Frogs play a really important role in the food chain, so they support many organisms.

Particularly, there's one snake species here that's an amphibian specialist, so it preys almost exclusively on amphibians, and it's thought to have population declines itself, which is almost as a direct result of amphibian population crashes. As the tadpole metamorphoses into a frog, its immune system suppresses because the tadpole begins to develop totally new organ systems that of an adult animal.

The stage of metamorphosis is most often when they succumb to disease from chytrid. We have now established the Honduras Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Center, which means removing the younger, weaker animals before they die from chytrid, curing them, raising them to their stronger, healthy adults, and then reintroducing them.

What happens with a lot of rescue efforts is you take populations from the wild, you get them in captivity, and then reintroduction doesn't always happen. So the plan for HARK, I think, is unique. I think HARK is a fantastic initiative, especially for the conservation of these really special species in the park. They're a pleasure to see in their natural environment, and I would love it if in future years I can see their populations increase as a direct result of it.