Sunday, May 11, 2008

My Spring Peepers are disappearing

There is a small pond slightly downhill from my house that every year has been home to hundreds of frogs -- peepers and bullfrogs that illuminate the evening with a cacaphony of song. I could always count on arriving home, when after dark, and being escorted up my walkway to my house by their musical racket. In the last few years, however, there has been a steady reduction in their numbers, as evidenced by the volume of their singing, such that this year they seem to be either very late, or absent altogether. The bullfrogs seem to come after the peepers, so perhaps they haven't arrived as yet. However, an article in the current issue of Defenders magazine, from Defenders of Wildlife, points out that amphibians such as frogs, salamanders, etc., are extremely sensitive to environmental stress and change, and that many species around the world are now in serious decline.

Is the disappearance of my Spring Peepers, as well as the rest of the world's amphibians, the proverbial "canary in the coal mine", a warning to us all that climate change is real, and that it's time for some serious thought about how to protect the environment -- for the frogs' sake, and for our own? I suspect that it is.

Read the above-mentioned article here. Comments welcome.

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