AmphibiaWeb
is an online system that provides access to information on amphibian
declines, conservation, natural history, and taxonomy.
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Species of the Week:
Rana muscosa
Amphibian News
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California Protects Sierra and Southern California Mountain Yellow-legged frogs under State Endangered Species Act. Just a few decades ago, mountain yellow-legged frogs (comprised of two closely related species, the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog, and the southern mountain yellow-legged frog) were abundant throughout their range in California and parts of Nevada, but declined rapidly. Widespread planting of nonnative trout from airplanes in high-elevation lakes has been a primary cause of the species’ decline. Introduced trout eat tadpoles and juvenile frogs and change the food web of the aquatic ecosystems on which the native frogs depend. Since 2000, agencies began restoring frog populations by removing nonnative trout from some high Sierra Nevada lakes; however, the emerging fungal pathogen ("chytrid") has caused widespread mass die-offs and more than half of the remaining populations identified in 1995 have disappeared.
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