Endangered Frog Species

now the yellow legged frogs used to be abundant throughout the angeles and san bernardino national forest today there are only about two hundred left in a few isolated pockets and a crisp clear day last month to biologists agree to take a visitor high up in the san gabriel mountains to one of the few places in southern california or the front still live there think this is the filter all threats are tied an investment franklin is a biologist with the us geological survey were surrounded by tall trees fragrant incense ears ponderosa is with cascading crowns and think on douglas's the reach out the tentacle like millions alessi half moon hangs over a two hundred foot granite rock face we descend into a stream bed carved out of the surrounding ross thousand shows as how to cross the street without damaging the frogs have attacked by tristan iraq's once they offer so will parts of the shores it flew joined by bill brown a biologist with the angeles national forest brown says even though this is a

fairly remote place frogs here face a number of challenges for one the mass of rock face that juts out from the edge of the stream is a popular rock climbing site brown says climbers walking along the creek are accidentally trampling the bank's crushing notes with the frogs often high or what other major concern we have is that that often some of the climbers will take a shortcut to the history channel and they do this during the korean seasoning monday it matters and that disturbed me stubbs break that the the master attached to the next move the production for a year we had extreme looking for frogs are hard to spot their only about two to three inches long and adam backman says the young and black's apples on their brownstein provide excellent can cause deadly find them and these letters appear right next to the water baskin or on rocks that are partially submerged like that one were there but the truth it may be too late in the

season for them to be active as the temperatures cool down their body starts to shut down the metabolism slows down we think they crawl under little rock crevices in places that remain voice and i think basically hibernate for the winter months that and says the local population began dwindling after a fierce storm in the late nineteen sixties we think happened was probably about two thirds of the population got wiped out they are washed wash down into the la basin and because of the development in the la basin and they were able to recruit back of the strings backman says they continued to decline rapidly ever since especially in the last five years he says besides humans research by the us geological survey suggests the biggest threat to the frog's currently is fish one large concern with a lot of animals in southern california or the introduction of exotic species or animals that they were here historically that one of those is that

the rainbow trout and drought are a predator one of the things that they eat or the temple's the trout were in toulouse two years ago by the state department of fish and game as well as by local sport fisherman backman says more research is needed to get a fuller picture of why the frogs have become so rare for example he'd like to find out if air pollution is also the end of our track upstream we haven't found any for us as we turned a head back and says two other local fronts are already on the endangered species list the red legged frog and the southwestern arroyo towed the us fish and wildlife service is very concerned about the health of the local amphibians jane hendren is a spokeswoman for the agency in southern california much of our wetlands and we have altered in significant portion of our natural streams and rivers and creeks week tonight make all of those alterations and changes without affecting the bp that inhabit the places the decline of the mountain yellow legged

frog is yet i know they're limp them up above the impact we're having on our environment fish and wildlife is expected to list the mountain yellow legged frog as endangered next year in the meantime adam back one of the geological survey hopes to launch a trial study to see if removing the trout from this creek will help save the frogs for kpcc news i'm elsa set sail in the angeles national forest