Reptiles at Yellowstone, headed out.

Yeah, we're still so freaking doomed. Don't take my relative silence lately for an surge of optomism!

"Amphibian populations at Yellowstone - the world's oldest national park - are in steep decline, a major study shows.
The authors link this to the drying out of wetlands where the animals live and breed, which is in turn being driven by long-term climate change.
The results, reported in the journal PNAS, suggest that climate warming has already disrupted one of the best-protected ecosystems on Earth.
..."Snow pack during the winter is decreasing - which other studies have documented - and the regional aquifer is drying up as a result of these large-scale climate changes.
"These ponds are changing, the environment is changing, the landscape is drying up and the amphibians no longer have a place to breed. It's disturbing."
Amphibian populations are in crisis worldwide: pollution, diseases such as chytrid fungus and rana virus, invasive species, UV radiation and habitat destruction all contribute to the problem. " LINK

It's that time of year again, Florida is on fire. But don't eat frog legs, even if they're nicely cooked from the fires, they're toxic. Yay Florida!

"Almost 33,000 acres of the Everglades National Park were burning Sunday, fire officials said, the latest in a series of wildfires that have scorched parts of Florida in May." LINK

So, the Everglades is on fire, but here's more Florida goodness -
"State wildlife and health officials warned Floridians last week against eating too many frog legs if they come from frogs caught in the state-controlled parts of the Everglades in western Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
A two-night harvest of 150 pig frogs from the Everglades and the Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area showed that the frogs had elevated mercury levels." LINK

Wow, a new kind of frog! Oh, heck, its habitat has been destroyed by climate change. Bye frog!

"NO sooner had Australia's newest frog species been identified than its discoverer warned that the amphibian's existence was threatened by climate change." LINK

Frogs- canaries in the coal mine. Heading out. Bye, Frogs.

Amphibians have proved to be some of the most vulnerable creatures to climate change and pollution, and their numbers have dropped precipitously worldwide. Most people know that frogs porous skin allows water pollution to affect them well before state-mandated pollution levels are reached, and most people also know that frogs' eggs are very vulnerable to temperature change. One of the other interesting threats to amphibians is a fungus that can kill them by growing on their skin, and for the first time this fungus has been cound in Japan.

"Frogs and many other amphibians are acutely sensitive to changes in environmental temperature and humidity as they can not maintain a steady internal temperature to the same extent as birds and mammals.
It is believed to be a major cause of the dramatic reduction of the number of amphibians in many parts of the world."
LINK