Welcome to our blog,
FROGS ARE GREEN!
For over 200 million years, ponds, marshes, grasslands, and rain forests have come alive with the calls of frogs. Yet these remarkable and colorful animals are declining at such a rapid rate that they are being called the Earth’s next dinosaurs. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, a third of the world’s amphibian species are threatened with extinction. To read more, click here!

Visit our Press page to see interviews and news features.

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Teachers:
Calling all Frog Artists!
Susan and I are seeking kids’ frog art—lots of it! We hope to encourage kids and their teachers to learn about and get interested in frogs, toads, and other amphibians. If you’re an elementary school teacher, parent, or educator, please send us jpegs (2mb maximum size) of your students’ or kids’ drawings or paintings of frogs and we will display them in school group galleries on the FROGS ARE GREEN blog. We’d be happy to receive images of any art form—sculpture, drawing, painting, or watercolor. Read more>>

Announcing the winner of our first "Frogs Are Green" photo contest! Congratulations to Jocelyn Hyers, whose winning photograph of a green tree frog was taken in Pierce County, Georgia, USA. To see her photo click here!

Do you do fieldwork or amphibian research with a zoo, environmental organization, university, or government agency? If so, please consider writing a guest post for us about your work (@300 words). Email it to us at: info@frogsaregreen.com.

Posts Tagged ‘save the frogs’

Save the Frogs Day! April 30, 2010

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

Did you know that April 30th is Save the Frogs Day?

Save-The-Frogs-Day-Treefrog-328

Dr. Kerry Kriger, conservation biologist, founder, and Executive Director of the amphibian conservation organization, Save the Frogs, first conceived of and coordinated this event in 2009. The goal of Save the Frogs Day is to raise awareness about the global amphibian extinction, and to get people of all ages involved in amphibian conservation efforts. On his Save the Frogs website, Dr. Kriger has a powerpoint presentation that can be downloaded, lesson plans for teachers, and many other ideas for students to get involved.

You might consider putting up a display in your school or community center. Susan and I recently put up a display at City Hall in Hoboken, New Jersey, with frog books, drawings of frogs we’ve received from kids, illustrated posters, a poster about the global amphibian decline, and so on. So many people stopped to look at the display as we were putting it up. They were genuinely surprised to learn that amphibians were in such danger.

FROGS ARE GREEN display currently at City Hall, Hoboken, New Jersey

FROGS ARE GREEN display currently at City Hall, Hoboken, New Jersey

You can download our mission poster (seen above on the right and left in the display) or a poster of a rainforest tree frog in our store. We also have eco-bands made from 100% recycled silicone, other posters, and t-shirts (proceeds go toward Save the Frogs and Amphibian Ark ).

You may also want to throw a Save the Frogs Day party with fun frog-related party favors.

Please send us your event ideas or JPEGs of your Save the Frogs Day event and we will post them in a gallery on our blog!

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Posted in How You Can Help, Save the Frogs Day | 2 Comments »

Yasuni National Park, Ecuador: An Amphibian Eden

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
Yasuni National Park, Ecuador. Courtesy www. banktrack.org

Yasuni National Park, Ecuador. Courtesy www.banktrack.org

Scientists have recently identified Yasuni National Park in Ecuador as one of the most biologically diverse places in South America, and perhaps on earth. As Shawn McCracken of Texas State University—San Marcos, recently said, “The 150 amphibian species throughout Yasuni is a world record for an area this size. There are more species of frogs and toads within Yasuni than are native to the United States and Canada combined.”

Unfortunately this Eden sits on oil reserves and is threatened by proposed oil development projects. McCracken and other scientists from Ecuador, the United States, and Europe have proposed a moratorium on new oil exploration until the effects of such projects can be explored.

Reading about this, we couldn’t help but think about the movie Avatar and the attempted destruction of the planet Pandora to mine unobtanium. Unfortunately, we humans aren’t as wise as the Na’vi—yet. Let’s hope that Ecuador will preserve this incredible pocket of biodiversity and not be so shortsighted as to destroy parts of it for oil.

Here is more information from Save the Frogs and the Environmental News Service.

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Posted in Amphibian habitat loss, Deforestation and frogs, Frogs and the Rainforest, Rainforest Frogs, habitat loss | 1 Comment »

Be a FrogWatcher this summer!

Monday, May 25th, 2009

This summer, consider becoming a FrogWatch USA volunteer, a Citizen Science Monitoring Program sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation. Participating in this program gives YOU the opportunity to help frogs and toads by collecting information essential for protecting them.

The FrogWatch site has a map of the US that lists local frog species. It also contains information about ordering CDs with frog calls from your region, lists of books to help you identify frog species, and all you need to know to become a successful Frog Watcher. If you’ve always wanted to do animal conservation fieldwork, here’s your chance to do it in your own neighborhood—maybe even your own backyard!

This summer I’ve been doing some informal Frog Watching with my family. We counted 17 small toads on one hike in the Norvin Green State Forest in New Jersey. We also went on a hike in Minnewaska State Park near New Paltz, New York, last weekend. At the nature center there, I picked up a pamphlet about frogs and toads of New York, where I learned that the hearty trilling I heard up in a pine tree wasn’t an invisible bird. It was a tiny Grey Tree Frog with a big voice! We also saw lots of tadpoles in a pond in various stages of metamorphosis.

Wherever you are this summer, keep an eye out for the amphibians!

Gray treefrog clinging to clover. Photographed by Lisa Miller at her home in northeastern Wisconsin. Courtesy of savethefrogs.com

Gray treefrog clinging to clover. Photographed by Lisa Miller at her home in northeastern Wisconsin. Courtesy of www.savethefrogs.com

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Posted in Frog Conservation, How You Can Help | 2 Comments »

Welcome to our Blog, FROGS ARE GREEN!

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

For over 200 million years, ponds, marshes, grasslands, and rain forests have come alive with the calls of frogs. Yet these remarkable and colorful animals are declining at such a rapid rate that they are being called the Earth’s next dinosaurs. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, a third of the world’s amphibian species are threatened with extinction.

World-renowned Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson has written in the book, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth:

Kermit the Frog, to summarize the situation in a phrase, is sick. And to varying degrees so is much of the living world. Might Homo sapiens follow? Maybe, maybe not. But with certainty we are the great meteorite of our time, having begun the sixth mass extinction of Phanerozoic history. We are creating a less stable and interesting place for our descendants to inherit.

Frogs are threatened by habitat loss, global warming, pollution, and disease. Because they breathe and drink through their skin, they are extremely sensitive to an unhealthy environment. Chemicals, pesticides, ozone, and UV are dangerous, even deadly, to them.

We called our blog FROGS ARE GREEN because we believe that healthy frogs mean a healthy planet. By saving the frogs, we will also save our planet—and ourselves.

Please hop in and get involved. We’d love to hear from you!

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Posted in Frog Conservation | 35 Comments »