A Hospital Just for Frogs

A frog hospital? You're joking, right?

No joke. There really IS a frog hospital and it's located in Cairns on the coast of Far North Queensland, Australia.

The Cairns Frog Hospital is small at the moment but our Curator has been receiving sick and injured frogs since August 1998. As of this writing, over 1,900 frogs have been turned in. Most of the injured frogs can be recovered and released back to the wild. Diseased frogs are another story, however. The complex of conditions we have been receiving includes problems not being reported from any other part of the country and therefore, these diseases have not been identified and cures are not yet known. Frogs which don't survive are preserved so that they can be tested for diseases. Once we know what pathogen is involved, we can find out if a successful treatment is available or if there is a prevention so that we can save frogs from these illnesses.

Tadpoles are also rescued from dwindling puddles, photographed, identified and then released at targeted sites to boost local frog populations. Rescues are also carried out on properties where the resident frogs are at risk from hostile residents or their neighbours (believe it or not, some people despise and/or fear frogs and, rather than leave them to cruel eradication methods, we remove the frogs and relocate them to friendlier surroundings).

Caring for injured frogs seems a simple idea at first but it is a very different process from other types of animals (such as birds, macropods, bats, etc.) which are normally handled by wildlife rescue groups. For a start, there has been a significant problem with amphibian diseases in recent years and this threat to frog populations is spreading. There are distance restrictions on the release of frogs which are ready to return to the wild and release can be complicated by the need to verify that the species actually exists at the intended release site (which can be difficult outside the breeding season).

What also makes frogs different from other rescued wildlife is that, while information and care techniques have been tried, tested and published for most animal types, this is not yet so for amphibians. Even a search of the internet will not provide sufficient information to help you get started as a frog carer. So one of the roles the Cairns Frog Hospital also hopes to play is to learn and document what the best treatments are for various conditions and to publish that information so that others can use it to help frogs.

On the research side of things, the Cairns Frog Hospital serves as a receiving station for sick frogs and frogs which are obviously not normal but have unknown conditions. Many of these have turned out to have very unusual conditions or diseases which hadn't been seen in those species before. One of the significant findings thus far has been the arrival of several frogs which have been diagnosed with skin cancer - a condition previously considered to be extremely rare. We have also received at least a dozen frogs with other types of growths. Such discoveries remind us of frogs' reputation as environmental indicators.

The sort of work we do is very expensive and we have received only a small amount of money from the Commonwealth government. We are currently involved in a major research project with CSIRO, JCU and the Registry of Wildlife Pathology to investigate our new diseases, but the funding we receive as a participant in that project does NOT cover the care and recovery of any frog which is returned to the wild. We must still raise that money ourselves and this has been extremely difficult.

On the state level, the Queensland government has refused to even acknowledge the existence of the new diseases! This not only causes funding issues but also means that government staff and their volunteers are going to disease sites with no precautions at all - because as far as they are concerned, there is nothing there to be concerned about!

The only thing that keeps our doors open is the support we get from people who care about frogs. We need some serious cash flow to pay all our bills but even donated goods and services can help save money, too. We are now tax deductable so this will be an extra incentive. We also offer memberships - visit our membership page for more information.

last edited: Dec. 5th, 2007