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Scientists Build an Ark To Save Jungle Amphibians
Peace Corps Online writes "In the 1980s a deadly fungus called chytrid appeared in Central America and began moving through mountain streams, killing as many as 8 out of 10 frogs and extinguishing some species entirely. (The fungus has little effect on any other vertebrates.) Now a returned Peace Corps volunteer and her husband have opened the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center in western Panama to house more than 600 frogs as chytrid cuts a lethal path through the region. Experts agree that the only hope of saving some of the more endangered, restricted-range species is to collect animals from remaining wild populations, establish captive breeding programs, and be prepared to conduct reintroduction projects in the future. But before reintroduction can even begin, scientists must find some way to overcome the chytrid in native habitats using vaccines, breeding for resistance, or genetic engineering of the fungus. Conservationists are budgeting for 25 years of captive breeding, long enough, they believe, to allow some response to chytrid to be found. 'There are more species in need of rescue than there are resources to rescue them,' says Amphibian Ark's program director. 'When you're talking about insidious threats like disease or climate change, threats that can't be mitigated in the wild, there's simply no alternative.'"
From the original text of the Peace Corp Act (emphasis mine):
to promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which shall make available to interested countries and areas men and women of the United States qualified for service abroad and willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower.
And now they're begging for money to save frogs. Is there really no more need in the world for "trained men and women"? Or even in Panama (the focus of this slashvertisement)? Well, by all means, then, change the focus/goals of your (gov't funded) organization. But please reflect it on your own website. And then explain to all those poor bastards that could apparently use trained/skilled workers, that they'll just have to get by with their current medicine/infrastructure/agriculture workforce until the frogs are taken care of.
Also, fuck you.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
anyone know the website number?
I understand that we dont want frogs to die off in that region but why mess with nature. If we vaccinate these frogs and there numbers swell; what are those consequences going to be? Im sure that the frogs will adapt to the environment and overcome.
Why not leave nature to its own devices? Survival of the fittest, and all that kinda stuff...
This is pure sentimentalization of nature. Are we going to protect gazelles from cheetahs next?
Breeding frogs in a greenhouse for many generations for reintroduction into a native environment? Wow, I bet the descendants will be much better prepared [/sarcasm]
Then there's the chance that the critters could be accidentally or mischievously let out in some sheltered environment (e.g. Hawaii, Austrailia), and overrun the place.
What about speciation and adaptation based on natural selection in their native environment? Just because 80+ pct are killed off by the fungus doesn't mean that they can't adapt and recover. At least, that's one reason we're told it's so hard to clear out pests from an inhabited area by chemical means.
Is this a good idea?
Preserving species that are not fit for their environment seems the wrong approach to me. The chance of ever totally eradicating this fungus is nil, and if the most numerous amphibian population around is a re-seeded susceptible population you get to re-play the whole scenario in another 25 or 100 years.
Even trying to bread a frog with some resistance is at best an artificial solution, and one that historically has never worked on any grand scale.
Nature is not so fragile that the loss of said frogs will not be offset the the advance of some niche dweller to fill the gap.
We can't even manage our own affairs. It seems unwise and premature to step in and take over from mother nature.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Is to protect some steady state that has never existed in nature.
Instead of American?
I know I've been looking forward to free-range fried frog's legs that don't let you down in the hallucination department.
I believe Love And Rockets covered this: "You cannot go against nature / because when you do / go against nature / it's part of nature too".
Thus confirming the thesis that all major questions of philosophy have been covered by 80s music.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Thank-you, uninformed comments about sentmental environmentalists and evolution are arguing in a factual vacum.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Losing a species unbalances nature so horribly it causes a chain reaction that terminates all life. This must be the first example of non-human-influenced extinction. This doesn't make sense; obviously it's a human's fault for bringing the fungus from some other continent, or something. What next? Brining Manbearpig to tropical paradises on oil tankers?
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Till humans end up in captive breeding programs to keep the population alive?
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Just because 80+ pct are killed off by the fungus doesn't mean that they can't adapt and recover.
I thought the point was that, in this case, the people observing think they won't be able to adapt and recover. The summary says, "extinguishing some species entirely" meaning it's already killed off some species that didn't adapt (to this fungus carried from Africa by humans).
It was a human accident (not malice).
Now the question is, do we sit back and watch them die or do we try to save some of them. When you spill wine on your friend's carpet, do you watch the stain soak in or do you take some responsibility and try to clean it up?
...on my plate, next to the mashed potatos.
Have gnu, will travel.
as long as these programs are paid for entirely by the untied states, that's fine. the untied states can afford to spend trillions of dollars each day. a hundred billion or so to save the frogs won't even be noticed.
Mr. R4ymond'5
Arks are why slashdotters are so numerous. We just refer to them as basements.
If we're going to save one species, we must save them all.
to be about doing AAL OVER AMERICA troubles of Walnut
in 50 years those frogs that survive the fungus will fill the open spot in the food chain.
we spend a lot of effort trying to stop change.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
A cure for chytridiomycosis has already been found. Researchers in New Zealand have found that infected Frogs can be treated with Chloramphenicol. Incredibly cheap to make, effective, and only causes aplastic anemia in 1 in 25,000 to 40,000 humans. What could possibly go wrong? It's not like interfering with nature using chemicals ever has any unintended consequences.
Insert pithy comment here.
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We sit back and watch them die. We might learn something about evolution by doing so.
Depends on whether they noticed me spill it, I guess. Though any of my friends who saw me with wine in my hand would know something was up. "I don't drink...wine." fits me to a T.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I'm going to stick my neck out and say that these nature lovers are hypocrites. There are two things that are certain in life: nature has a way of balancing itself out, and humans have a way to destroy everything they touch. If 8 out of 10 frogs are being killed by this fungus, that's the millenia-old rule of the survival of the fittest. We try to interfere with this impenetrable law, and we end up fucking with something else indirectly.
At best, it will save a few frogs whose existence has been deemed obsolete by the natural chemical evolution of their own habitat. At worst, it will lead to the birth of a stronger, human-borne disease that will wreak far greater havoc in our lives. The only fact is that we don't know all the variables at play, and meddling with them is, by definition, a foolish act in itself.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
An Ark... I would like to see they patent that one...
If you don't like my sig then don't read it.
this is honestly ridiculous. Saving species' for the sake of species doesn't make sense. If it isn't humanities fault (like most environmental problems) then we should leave it be, instead of sticking our grubby fingers where we shouldn't. To me, this represents perfectly human stupidity. It's no wonder that we have an environmental disaster heading towards us. To be honest, it seems like 'life' would be better off without us...
... we, Homo Sapiens, become Homo Evolutis. By taking direct control over the evolution of other species (and of ourselves).
(see the thought-provoking Juan Enriquez shares mindboggling new science on this subject)
I agree that we need to help in the situation. However, this is nature we are talking about and there is only so much we can do. We should help the frogs so they do not go extinct but the fungus needs to be controlled. Maybe we should spend some money looking at the fungus and something to control it.
As my botany prof said, you cannot define a species until all its members are gone. Mankind has been the single best creator of species since the asteroid killed off the dinosaurs.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
... or just as wrong as killing animals, to be specific.
If no humans existed, the fungus would have killed the frogs, making place for other and new species. That is one way of natural selection.
Why do we have animal protection programs in the first place? Because we meddled with nature, and have to fix it.
Not because animals are dying.
This is a typical case of forgetting the original intent and blindly following the rules. Even if they are completely contradicting that intent.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.