Various Methods to Contribute Towards Frog Conservation

The Frog Decline Reversal Project, Inc. is a non-profit, tax deductable group using various activities to help conserve and enhance frog populations in the Cairns region. Some of our programs are already running and others will start up when we have more volunteers (and money) to carry them. Each of these activities are designed to compliment others, like a team of players working together.

Cairns Frog Hospital

This is by far our most labour-intensive and costly activity but it has more than proven its potential to help frogs and has transformed our group into one of the most productive practioners of disease surveillance in Australia. The CFH has its own page in this site.

Information Service

Mostly through this website but also by mail, phone and in person, we provide information to the community, vets, rangers, overseas keepers and students, researchers - anyone who contacts us on all matters pertaining to frogs in this region.

Presence at Major Events

We used to have an educational display stall at exhibition events in Cairns such as the Botanic Gardens Festival in September and the Tropical Garden Show in May. These are opportunities to talk to a large number of people and provide our fact sheets but also to sell some merchandise to make a little money for our work. These stalls require set and take down and helpful volunteers to talk to people. There is also a bit of planning, runaround and logistics behind the scenes. However, we decided in 2004 not to pursue these events for two reasons - the crowds at many of these large events are now looking more for entertainment than education and this caused us to lose money at every stall we had in 2003; and volunteering in this region appears to be on a decline so we are not able to find sufficient volunteers to pull off these labour intensive events.

All-species Survey for Cairns

We know that a significant decline has taken place but the state government has actually fobbed us off by saying that we have to prove it before they will give it any consideration! There are various ways to survey and we have tried both active and passive means - in other words, we have tried using volunteers to do this ourselves and mass-media to provide a form for residents to send in. Neither method was terribly successful - please visit our survey page for more info.

Road Kill Task Force

This may seem like a silly or futile program to undertake, but it can help boost frog populations so it is worth doing. There are many road kill 'hot spots' throughout Cairns such as Collins Avenue in front of the Botanic Gardens, MacNamara and Greenslopes Streets, Swallow Street at Koppen Park, etc. The problem with these 'hot spots' is that most of the frogs that are run over are mature frogs that are in breeding condition and on their way to a site. Others like the Intake Road near Rocks Road in Redlynch are sections where juveniles dispersing from the quary on the hill are killed. Hundreds or even thousands of future offspring are eliminated when a single gravid female frog is run over on her way to a breeding site. By having two or three volunteers patrol these 'hot spots' on rainy, summer nights, frogs can be assisted across the road safely and injured frogs brought into care so that they will survive to breed again. If you have evenings free and would like to be a patrol team member, contact us during the wet season.

Publishing

We produce fact sheets on ways to help frogs and we have designed and developed our own website which is expanded at least once a year. We also are approached by magazines and newspapers to do articles and supply photography. We are planning to write a frog care manual eventually and possibly a four-colour book on FNQ frogs, subject to finding sufficient investment to get the book printed and more help for the Curator so that she can spend time on authoring and less time in day to day tasks.

School Presentations

We are contacted by schools on a regular basis wanting speakers, material or other support for frog and environmental topics in their classes. However, we are unable to properly service this area as the CFH Curator is too overburdened with work and none of our present members are able to fit in training for school talks. If you are a retired teacher or someone who is confident talking to large numbers of kids, and close to or in Cairns, we'd like to hear from you. We would like to train someone in all matters froggy who can do a regular visit to a school - say once a fortnight or once a week. We already have a general slide show put together for adult groups and the details of a talk to get you started.

Tadpole Rescues

Another way of helping to boost frog numbers is to rescue their tadpoles and raise them in captivity. This has become so much more important because of the 2000-03 drought and the severity of the disease problems we have seen. During the fragmented wet seasons that appear to be becoming the norm up here, water accummulates in places temporarily but doesn't last long enough for the tadpoles to complete their development and metamorph. Thousands of frogs die in this process - unless they are rescued. Once rescued, they need to be kept in tanks from a few weeks to several months. As they metamorph, they need to be collected and confined in a habitat tank, fed frequently and then released to specific sites in the same area they came from. (If the tadpoles are from your suburb originally, then they can be allowed to disburse naturally as they metamorph.) Tadpole raising can involve thousands of tadpoles and several large tanks are required. Your water source is important and some access to direct sunlight is needed. It is a very labour intensive activity and requires time on a daily basis and personal finances to cover the costs of proper food over several months time for your tiny charges. Be also aware of the rapid spread of "Redlynch virus" in FNQ. The last thing you want to do is rescue tadpoles that turn out later to have this nasty pathogen.

Captive and/or In Situ Breeding

Most species of frogs in Cairns are in trouble for various reasons. Captive and in situ (on site, not confined) breeding is a very useful tool that can help boost the numbers of frogs and help re-establish them in areas where they have declined. In order to start up a captive breeding operation, we will need to move into much larger premises which is dependant on our raising a lot more money than we do now. We are also still trying to get permits for this activity which is a challenge because the state government does not recognise the concept of captive breeding for conservation purposes and has no existing permit to issue us.

Lobbying and Advocacy

We have spent the last eight and a half years gathering data on the status of the area's frogs and identifying the threats that they face. We have been using that information to lobby for greater protection of frogs and isolation of the new diseases. After several years of trying to bring these serious problems to government attention, we have finally received a listening and responsive ear from the Commonwealth government and they have committed over $2 million dollars in the next three years to isolating our new diseases. The state government in particular has taken a hostile stance in their refusal to acknowledge the existence of these diseases. We're simply not taking no for an answer but we need the voters to make sure elected officials know you consider this issue important. If you want to write a letter to complain, the details are in our letter writer's corner pages.

Research

We are the lead collaborator on a phd project supervised by James Cook University. This project will endeavour to ascertain the identity of the pathogen which is causing the Immuno-deficiency complex in the White-lipped and Common Green tree frogs. We have also just begun working with the DEH, CSIRO and JCU on a much larger project to isolate and create diagnostic tests for all the other new frog/toad diseases we've uncovered.

We are also working on the establishment of other links to the university in the form of student projects. We have recently acquired GIS capability and JCU students will be involved in the conversion of the raw data into the GIS software for mapping output. Another student project will be the design of a database, input of survey responses and analysis of the survey results for the Cairns survey forms collected in early 2005.

To facilitate communication and expand our knowledge of emerging pathogens, we are also members of the Australian Wildlife Health Network, the Wildlife Disease Association and the Ecological Society of Australia. We have presented stand-up presentations on the new diseases to the scientific conferences of the last two of those organisations as well as Powerpoint presentations to the Fauna Care conference in NSW in 2004 and the Chytrid Hygiene conference in Melbourne in 2004.

Last updated: March 8th, 2007