The Kihansi spray toad, which has hopped into oblivion in its native home of Tanzania, has found a safe haven at WCS's Bronx Zoo. A new exhibit features an "assurance colony" of the small, mustard-colored toads, a species now listed as extinct in the wild.
When the spray toad's waterfall habitat dried up, WCS scientists stepped in.
The chirps of these toads once filled a verdant, five-acre swath of the Kihansi Gorge, where they lived in the mist created by the waterfalls. It was their only habitat in the world. But when construction of a hydroelectric dam at the falls began in the late 1990s, diverting the water flow out of the gorge, the mist zone dried up.
The new exhibit is a window into the efforts of a team of WCS herpetologists to ensure the toad does not disappear from the planet altogether. In 2001, following an agreement with the government of Tanzania, WCS scientists helped collect 499 spray toads from the gorge and flew them back to New York. In the years since, they have worked to propagate the species behind the scenes. Breeding a colony of toads that have so many unique requirements–a special insect diet, a steady spray of mist, filtered water, and more–has been a true feat.
Within the next year, WCS will send a small population to a facility at the University of Dar es Salaam. Eventually, in collaboration with Tanzanian partners who have already installed a system of sprinklers at the gorge to replicate the toad's habitat, they hope to return the species to the wild.
Read more...
