JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Lassen Volcanic National Park in far Northern California is a rugged wonderland of lava flows, cinder cones and boiling pools. It is also dotted with welcoming meadows and alpine lakes - places a small, brown frog once called home. The last-known cascades frog vanished from the park in 2007. It was wiped out by a deadly fungus that's ravaging frog populations worldwide. The frogs still exist elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, but a determined band of biologists is set on bringing them back to Lassen Volcanic National Park. Ryan Wagner is one of those biologists. He is a Ph.D. candidate at Washington State University and joins me now. Welcome.
RYAN WAGNER: Hello.
SUMMERS: Ryan, let's go back to 2007, if we can, with this one last frog that scientists knew of in the park. What can you tell me about her and why she disappeared?
WAGNER: There was this one final female cascades frog that every spring would move down to the larger breeding pools, and she'd sit there and wait and listen for males calling. And she wouldn't hear them because she was the last one. And biologists watched her for several years, lingering, until one year she was gone. And biologists haven't seen a cascades frog in Lassen Volcanic National Park since.
SUMMERS: And if we fast-forward nearly 20 years, you and a team of scientists took on this mission of reintroducing these cascades frogs to the national park. But if I understand it correctly, you gave the frogs a special bath first - is that right?
WAGNER: That's right. We bathe them in a highly dilute antifungal bath. And we bathe them for just five minutes every day for about a week in this antifungal to kill off the fungus that's causing these population declines. And that allows us to give them a better chance of survival when we reintroduce them.
SUMMERS: How did you actually just, like, physically transport the frogs into the park?
WAGNER: We used little Tupperware containers. We put one frog per deli cup. We put a little bit of wet sphagnum moss in there. And then we loaded them into a cooler, drove them to the release site and then loaded them all into backpacks. We had volunteers and other biologists place all of these frogs into hiking day packs, and then we hiked several miles to the release site and released each one at the water's edge.
SUMMERS: What was the moment like when you let those first frogs go?
WAGNER: It felt like a really big moment for the cascades frog. These were the first individuals to reenter their historic home. And it's a really hopeful moment, I think, for cascades frogs and for amphibians in general, since we've been seeing these declines.
SUMMERS: Given the fact that the fungus is still likely out there in these environments, is there a danger that the frogs might get reinfected - potentially die off again?
WAGNER: The frogs could become reinfected. But one of the things that we know about cascades frogs is that the metamorph life stage right after they turn into froglets from tadpoles is the most sensitive life stage to infections with this fungus. And so we're hoping to treat these frogs when they're little, and we're going to continue to monitor these populations and potentially conduct future baths in future years to keep them resilient against this chytrid fungus.
SUMMERS: Have you been able to go back out to see the frogs since that trip in September when you first reintroduced them?
WAGNER: I have. We went back out about three weeks later and we did re-find many of our released frogs. And so we think that's a good sign that they've survived that initial reintroduction. Now the next hurdle is to see how do they fare over winter. It's now winter in Lassen. All of the snow and ice has laid out over the ponds and the meadows and the frogs are overwintering under the water there. And so we're going to go back out in the spring and try to re-find our frogs to understand how did they do and what needs to happen next.
SUMMERS: That's wildlife biologist Ryan Wagner. He's a Ph.D. candidate at Washington State University. Thank you.
WAGNER: Thank you very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
