Wild, cosmic-eyed frog rediscovered in a far-off cloud forest
Teresa Camacho Badani's boots brimmed with water after slogging through flowing streams in Bolivia's mountainous cloud forest. It had been a taxing day searching for an elusive frog that potentially still inhabited the gushing streams here — though the species hadn't been spotted in 10 years. She was exhausted.
But she stepped into one last stream, and found a wild-eyed, orange-bellied Sehuencas water frog. She screamed.
"I couldn't believe it," Badani, the chief of herpetology at the Museo de Historia Natural Alcide d’Orbigny, said over the phone from her office in Bolivia.
At a time when conservation news is repeatedly dour and current extinction numbers are between 100 to 1,000 times that of the natural, expected rate, the discovery of this female frog (along with four others) provides a dose of cautious optimism. Read more...
More about Science, Conservation, Endangered Species, Frogs, and Science