As many as 222 amphibian species could already have gone extinct, and 2,873 are in danger of extinction, says the second Global Amphibian Assessment, which has been published in the journal Nature.
The study analyses two decades’ worth of data from around the world, evaluating the extinction risk of 8,011 amphibian species for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, which assesses each species’ conservation status according to criteria such as population size and trend, habitat condition, prevalent threats, and range and categorises them on a scale from ‘Least Concern’ to ‘Extinct’.
The Chiriqui harlequin frog, Atelopus chiriquiensis. The sharp-snouted day frog, Taudactylus acutirostris. The wry lip brittle-belly frog, Craugastor myllomyllon. The Jalpa false brook salamander, Pseudoeurycea exspectata.
These are the four amphibian species confirmed extinct since the first Global Amphibian Assessment was completed in 2004. The second assessment has just been completed and published in Nature, and although the number of confirmed amphibian extinctions has only risen from 33 to 37, the real figure could be 222 (adding the species categorised as Critically Endangered, Possibly Extinct), but most likely even higher, as we do not have vast historical data on amphibian species.
The Chiriqui harlequin frog was one of the confirmed extinctions of the second Global Amphibian Assessment, last seen in Costa Rica in 1996. Illustration by Aurora Gomez Espinoza.
Why amphibians?
But why are amphibian extinctions something to be worried about? If you don’t have a love for these semi-aquatic creatures, with their bright colours, metallic eyes, and metamorphising life cycle (and admittedly, at Synchronicity Earth, we’re not sure why you wouldn’t), there are plenty more reasons why we need to pay attention to amphibians.
Amphibians thrive in healthy ecosystems, so the decline of amphibian populations is an important warning that an ecosystem is in decline, alerting us to take action before more species are affected. They also have important roles to play, in the food web both by eating and being eaten (without them, insect populations could skyrocket and threaten humans, livestock, and plants); recycling natural materials and transferring nutrients between land and freshwater. They also have an important role in human cultures worldwide, as explored recently by Dr Pria Ghosh’s Amphibians and Culture blog series.
But aside from the wider picture, the endangerment and extinction of each amphibian species due to our treatment of the planet is a permanent loss of a fascinating, unique, and ancient legacy of the natural world.
The Wyoming toad is one of the only species classified as ‘Extinct in the wild’, as since 1991 it has existed only in captivity within Mortenson Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Wyoming in the United States. Image: Sara Armstrong USFWS
Raising the alarm
The main drivers of decline in amphibian populations represent the issues we have to be most concerned about for our natural world: disease and habitat loss/degradation. The faster amphibian populations decline, the more we should be worried for our planet ecosystem as a whole.
