The illegal wildlife trade is just one more card in a tall deck stacked against them. In the wild, these frogs are found in tiny populations, limited to ranges of just a few square miles of forest that are constantly being diminished and fragmented by agriculture and logging. The frogs left at the airport were to be sold as exotic and colorful pets to a growing international base of collectors. Lozano didn’t know it at the time, but he would later look back on that moment and realize he’d stumbled into the heart of the international illegal wildlife trade, which by some estimates rakes in $10 to $20 billion a year. Scientists believe these frogs acquire their toxicity, which is used as a defense mechanism to deter predators, by assimilating plant poisons ingested by the insects that make up their diet in the wild. The most toxic of all- Phyllobates terribilis, the golden poison frog-carries enough batrachotoxin, a potent neurotoxin, to kill 10 grown men. Poison dart frogs are known as some of the most toxic animals on Earth. ![]() “The important thing was to save the frogs-that was our job.” Luckily, the brief contact with the Lehmann’s frog caused only intense pain and swelling. When one of the small frogs leaped from its enclosure, Lozano panicked and scooped it up with his bare hands, poisoning himself with the frog’s secretions. “We had to basically live there for the first several days trying to save the remaining animals, which for us were like precious jewels.” “We didn’t have food, terrariums, or anything,” he says. Most collectors consider the Lehmann’s poison frog to be the holy grail among poison dart frogs for its rarity. Lozano and his colleagues at the rescue center were accustomed to receiving animals like parrots, turtles, and monkeys-common victims of domestic trafficking-but they’d never encountered such a large single shipment of individual animals, much less of poison dart frogs. The majority were Lehmann’s poison frogs-a critically endangered species with bright red, yellow, orange, and black bands and found only in a small patch of tropical rain forest in western Colombia. ![]() “When I saw that shipment of frogs, I was left speechless,” Lozano says. But by the time he arrived, many of the frogs had died. Lozano, who was then the director of Bogotá’s wildlife rescue center, rushed to the office. Inside, the police found nearly 800 poison dart frogs, crammed into tiny containers. ![]() Two suspicious boxes had been discovered at El Dorado International Airport, in Bogotá, on their way to Europe. It was the Colombian police one Sunday in 1998, and they had some strange news. Thus, Save the Frogs Day works to raise awareness about the dangers that frogs face in their own homes and highlight the consequences of a world without them.CUNDINAMARCA, COLOMBIAIvan Lozano recalls the night the phone rang. During the holiday, the folks at Save the Frogs, as well as scientists in 58 countries, hold presentations and seminars at local schools, groups, and community centers to raise awareness of frog conservation, highlighting the threats they face and presenting ways on how to contribute to their conservation. Up to 914 frog species are currently endangered, while up to 200 species have already been declared extinct since the 1970s.Īlso, few regulations exist that prevent the transport of infected frogs, which can cause problems for unfamiliar environments and for those who use them as pets or food. Kriger, the main threats frogs face today are habitat destruction, disease, pollution, pesticides, and climate change, all of which threaten to accelerate their extinction worldwide. ![]() However, like many animal species on this Earth, frogs are also endangered. The little amphibians, of which there are over 5,000 species, are fans of insects such as mosquitos, as they gobble them up voraciously to help keep their numbers at bay, which also helps ensure the health and comfort of human life. Not only do they play an important role in keeping the global ecosystem in check, but they are an unmistakable part of the atmosphere, as their croaks add to the ambiance of nature and in some areas, signal the beginning of springtime. Frogs have been a part of the Earth’s ecosystem since the Triassic period and are found all over the world. This holiday was created to promote education and conservation efforts for the little amphibians. Kerry Kriger of the Save the Frogs organization. Save the Frogs Day was founded in 2009 by Dr.
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