Take Action
AMPHIBIAWEB

 

(Translations may not be accurate.)

Take Action

"Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world;
indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." --Margaret Mead

Get involved in community-led conservation

Many amphibians migrate to and from their aquatic breeding habitats every year, making a perilous journey through urbanized landscapes. High-traffic roads can pose a serious threat to breeding adults and to juveniles when they leave the breeding sites. If you live in a place with amphibians that make seasonal migrations, there may be community-led efforts to help amphibians safely reach their breeding sites. For example, you can volunteer with the Chileno Valley Newt Brigade in Petaluma, California. The Newt Patrol similarly has been surveying newt roadkills around Lexington Reservoir in Los Gatos, California, since 2017, in order to document annual newt roadkills to advocate for conservation measures.

Join fellow citizen scientists on an iNaturalist.org Project dedicated to reporting any dead or dying salamanders.

In New York, the NY Department of Environmental Conservation helps provide safe passage for salamanders and other amphibians to their breeding grounds.

Try an internet search (e.g., DuckduckGo or Google) to see if equivalent programs exist in your area that you can get involved with, and if not, consider reaching out to your local biodiversity-focused organizations (e.g., zoos, state and local parks, universities) to propose new partnerships in establishing such a program. More generally, community-led habitat restoration efforts in local parks and other outdoor spaces can also benefit amphibians.

Create amphibian-friendly habitats at home

If you live alongside amphibians (and you probably do even if you've never seen them!), consider making your outdoor spaces more welcoming by minimizing pesticide use, using native plants, providing shelter objects like leaf litter and decaying logs, and building a water feature. These practices all will benefit other native wildlife including birds, butterflies, and pollinators.

Collect data to support research and inform policy

When you make observations of your local amphibians using community science platforms like iNaturalist (global) and FrogID (only available in Australia), you are providing georeferenced, time-stamped data points that can help scientists monitor how species distributions and breeding behaviors are shifting in response to threats like habitat loss, climate change, and disease. These scientific studies can then inform policy to mitigate impacts. FrogWatch USA is another major community science project in which trained volunteers listen for frogs and toads following a standardized protocol, and their observations are submitted to a national database to track changes in amphibian breeding activity through time and space. Reach out to your local natural history museums, science centers, and parks to ask about opportunities to get involved in community science projects like the City Nature Challenge.

Amphibian disease monitoring

PARC- Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation

The PARC Disease Task Team has created a system for people in the U.S. and Canada to report an incident of sick, dying, or multiple dead amphibians or reptiles. Simply send an email to: herp_disease_alert@parcplace.org

IMPORTANT: Include in your email

  1. Your name and e-mail address (for any follow-up questions)
  2. What you saw
  3. Where it was (city, state and other location information, e.g., name of park or forest)
  4. What types of animals were involved (species [if you are sure of the identification] and life stages observed [eggs, larvae, subadults, adults])
  5. Is it ongoing (some sick-looking animals that are alive? or only dead or decayed animals observed?)
  6. Any photos or other relevant information
The State or Provincial contacts for herpetofaunal diseases will be alerted, and they may contact you further for additional information. Following the report, the managing agency will make a decision on whether or not a follow-up action is needed. This system will help us to facilitate early detection and rapid response actions, where possible. It will also aid our understanding of the scope and severity of emerging infectious diseases.

Read more about PARC Disease Task team efforts to combat amphibian and reptile diseases, and the Bsal Task Team efforts focused on salamander fungal disease.

AmphibiaWeb Disease Portal

Sampling Bd or Bsal in the field? Are you publishing a paper and the journal requesting your data be archived?
Contribute your data to the Amphibian Disease Portal! Find out more.

A repository for biologists who are sampling Bd and Bsal. We aim to facilitate and promote collaboration in the scientific community to understand and combat chytridiomycosis. Aggregating field data on disease is the first step in the combatting amphibian declines.